Best Laid Plans
Location: Issa and Oshisyth's Weyr
Time: Day 17, Month 9, Turn 2
Players: Roa, Issa, and Oshisyth
Scene: The two sympathizers discuss what to do, now that the Instigators have royally screwed up.
Autumn comes without much warning and from one day to the next, the air is cold, the leaves have turned, and snow becomes a promise rather than a memory. It is in this crisp season that Tialith makes one of her swift descents onto Oshisyth's ledge, depositing her bundled rider before winging away again to find a patch of pale sunlight. Roa begins to unwind her scarf as she steps into the inner weyr. "Issa?" she calls. "I'm here."
"Come in, come in." The answer comes from the sitting area, where, in front of a cheerily burning fire, Issa stands with her head bent over a hide held at arms length. A few piles sitting in a neat row across the top of the wooden chest mark the origin of that one in her hand, formation marks scrawled across all of the visible ones, at least. Her eyes don't lift to welcome the weyrwoman just yet. She's too busy poring over the writing to give more than a distracted wave to urge Roa forward into the weyr. Oshisyth compensates for the lack of manners, issuing her customary two-tone greeting from the position she's taken, curled behind Issa and peering over her shoulder curiously. The greenrider then drops the hide to her side and sighs, blue eyes flipping up to refocus (after a few swift blinks) on Roa. "A Weyr council," Issa states, letting the breathlessness of the sigh infiltrate her words. Straight to business, it seems.
Roa's eyes travel over to the formations almost immediately, curiosity coloring her expression. Oshisyth is given a nod and a warm smile. "Hello there," she murmurs before moving closer to the greenrider. For the assessment, there is a nod. "A Weyr council. I could absolutely kick them. All of them. Very hard." The 'them' is not clarified, but, does it need to be? "What were they -thinking-?"
Issa sends the hide she's holding down to its pile with a heavy toss, scattering the stack away from its neat lines with a ruffling smack. "They can't have been thinking at all," is her assertion, voiced as she stalks slowly over to the chair. "How," and here she breaks to pivot and fall into the chair with another weighted sigh, "can they have thought that a good idea? I told them. We need to move slowly, be patient and see... but no. They have to align themselves with a woman who's been terrorizing the Weyr for months." Through the venting, Issa has enough mind to flick her fingers at the sofa, a wordless invitation for Roa to sit, though it's the only effort she gives to her hostess obligations.
"No. They were thinking. They were idiots, but they had their reasons." Roa wanders over to the couch and sinks down. She leans back, eyes closing and hands coming up to cover her face. It is for this reason that her next words, quiet anyhow, are muffled. "It's my fault, actually."
Issa pulls up her legs to join her on the chair, feet curled up next to her as her knees fall against the arm of the chair. In the process of hastily sweeping a curl away from her forehead, her movement is stunted and her hand hovers instead beside her temple. Muffled though they are, those words seem to have been caught. "How so?" she queries in the break. The gesture is completed moments later, but it's smoother, more controlled than before, without the twitchy annoyance with which it began.
"I made a deal with Aivey," Roa confesses softly. "She wasn't going to give up E'sere, so I offered her something. Information. About her father." Roa's hands come away from her face and fall into her lap. "Her father's name is Derek. He's an Instigator and he was a guard at High Reaches Hold. He was one of the nasty ones. Aivey idolized him. Jensen was the one who turned Derek in all those turns ago. That was the connection, and her motivation for the attacks. We agreed that she would tell the whole truth when the Harpers spoke to her if, after the trial, I told her what I remembered of Derek. And if I..." and here Roa cannot help but grimace, "gave him a letter. From her."
Roa's grimace is met with a thinning of Issa's eyes, subtle but noticeable. "Letter," she repeats softly, the word drifting away from her with a cool undertone. "The letters that I," there's the beginning of a stress on the pronoun before the entire word is clipped off, strangled into a split second of silence before the rest comes, "handed over." The questioning intonation is missing, making it more of a statement, a realization. "Well, that's good to know, Roa," she finishes with a sharp, sour note.
"No," says Roa with a shake of her head. "It was my mess. I gave that one over myself. When I brought back the guards. I had to write it for her, because she couldn't. It didn't say much. 'Dear father. I did my best. I only hope it was enough. I don't regret anything. I love you. Your daughter. Aivey.' Frankly, I didn't think Derek would care. Nor did I think they would be mad enough to...obviously, I was wrong."
Those thinned eyes relax a degree when Roa assures Issa that the greenrider didn't have a hand in the escape of her own attacker. But that hint of sourness in her tone is stickier, threading through the echo, "Obviously," as she settles her chin onto her hand to ponder the contents that have been spelled out for her. Fingers lift and tap along her cheek, pattering out an irregular beat. "The daughter of an exile. It makes sense," she muses, the acidic quality of her voice replaced by simple thoughtfulness, eyes drifting idly over the piles of hides. "So you think E'sere went there as well?" But she answers her own question before Roa has a chance. "He would've had to."
Roa's "Yes," mingles with Issa's "he would have had to" and finally the goldrider lifts her head and opens her eyes. "The daughter of an exile," she agrees softly. "I think I...maybe there was some sympathy there. Whatever else horrible she'd done, she was going to die and never even be able to know him. I was going there anyhow. It seemed harmless, and it felt right. So, I screwed up pretty nicely there." Her head flops back so Roa can stare up at the ceiling, blinking thoughtfully.
"Well, you're not the only one to have screwed up. You can rest easy there." Issa's head tilts back too, but just far enough to lean against the cushion, keeping Roa in her sights. "I'm the one who gave E'sere the coordinates," she says, a confession of her own, made with a wry, wearied smile. "What a pair we are," she continues after a sighing pause. "Both duped into aiding and abetting. We're perfect for each other, Roa."
"At least I'm in good company, then," Roa offers with a weak smile. But then she groans. "Shells, I have no clue how to fix this. We can't go there anymore." Roa lifts her head again. "-You- can't go there any more. We've got to cut off contact now. Diya will have to find another way to reach us. They're on their own with a hatching and baby dragons and...fuck! Those idiots!" There aren't too many places or people one is allowed to be angry about instigators in front of, after all. Issa, it seems, gets the honors.
Issa has lapsed into a quiet, pensive stare at Roa's feet during the weyrwoman's ranting, but she stirs at the expletive, letting her eyes lift slowly to the younger woman's face, an amused little grin creeping slowly into place. "I have to. At least once more, Roa. We have to let them know what's happened. The Weyr council is going to take some sort of action, that's for sure. And we can't just let it happen without giving them any sort of warning." Another flicker of tappings rains down on her cheek once again, and, more quietly, she adds, "For Diya's sake, if nothing else."
"Issa, I don't know that we can afford it. They're -there- now. We can't...don't you think they might be anticipating such a contact? Planning for it?" Roa is frowning softly, her words unhappy. But necessary.
"Probably," Issa concedes quickly with a light shrug, lifting her hand away from her face and dropping it to curl atop the chair's arm, rubbing it there with a slow, lazy motion. "But I have to make sure. I won't speak to anyone but Diya," then, with a flicked glance to Roa, she adds casually, "and J'lor. Discreet as always." Stubborn as always, she speaks as if it were already decided she would go, already a sure thing that she'd see that island at least once more. "/You/ can't afford it," she adds, "I can. No one notices if I spend an extra hour on sweeps. Trust me." Delivered emphatically, the last piece gets emphasized more by the tiny pause she takes, her eyes swinging to take in the surrounding weyr again. "Plus, we can't just cut Diya off without warning. Plans have to be made." And thus surfaces, perhaps, the real reason.
At the mention of J'lor, Roa rolls her eyes with a small snort. "If I were you, I'd stick to Diya," she says flatly. "She has some semblance of common sense left. I need you to promise me, though, that this is the last time. You'll take the verdict of the Weyr Council to them, leave some thoughts with Diya, and that's all." She leans forward, blue eyes intent. "Promise, Issa."
Issa meets that intent gaze from the weyrwoman for several blank seconds before she responds. And even then, it's only with a bland, "I promise," that is distinctly without the conviction one would hope for. But there's no defiance in it either, which bodes well, at least. Unblinking, she stares across the space between them for a moment longer before looking away. Oshisyth has, in the interim, been idly observing the effects that a talon has on stone when scraped across it many, many times. Though the scrabbling sound has yet been soft and subdued, the green gives a sudden, stronger scraping on the heels of that promise that sends out a nails-on-chalkboard like screeching. With a shiver that gives rise to a grimace, Issa shoots her dragon a look that lingers until a draconic whuff ripples across the top hides and the talon-scraping stops entirely. "Probably for the best," is what Issa adds then, much more resigned.
"Thank you," is offered quietly, Roa's gaze holding Issa's for as long as Issa's holds Roa. And then there's that awful sound and some cringing and ear-covering happens. "Ah! How do they always manage to find the most awful things..." but the weyrwoman is smiling and shaking her head. "It is for the best, but...what made -you- say that?"
Issa has a grin ready for that emphasis Roa puts on that pronoun, but it's decidedly empty and devoid of mirth. "Oh, it's nothing," she insists with a slow and steady shaking of her head. She focuses intently then on the arm of the chair as her fingers beginning to pick at a patch rubbed bare by turns of use. But that insistent tone is contradicted as she clarifies that 'nothing'. "It's just... Reyce." Her tone is deceptively dismissive and she even gives a casual little shrug to increase the effect.
And Reyce being nothing is apparently something, because there's a flicker of a frown now, and Roa has pushed herself up straight. "Do you...you think he suspects?"
And Roa succeeds in bringing back Issa's cheer, for the greenrider has to laugh at that, the chuckling beginning with a strong burst and trickling away into her words. "No," she begins with a vehement shake of her head, "Faranth, no. /No./" That last stress weights her tone, grinding the laughter away and bringing her back to the realm of serious conversation. "It's just..." She seems on the verge of adding another 'nothing' on at the end, but when she turns her eyes up to meet Roa's, something stops that. Quelling any remains of a smile, she presses her mouth into thin line. "He tried to uncover Instigators at Benden. To turn them in. He doesn't know anything, so there's no trouble, but..." Heavy implications trail off of that last word, dragging on the silence that follows.
"But if he did, he might," Roa finishes for the greenrider. She rests her elbows on her knees, clasping her hands and leaning forward to rest her mouth against her knuckles. She sits that way for a couple minutes. "Was he dating one at the time?" she asks after a spell.
Issa simply nods over the ending Roa provides, quietly letting it be and refraining from adding anything of her own. As long as Roa holds the silence, she too is quiet, letting her head lean against the back of the chair as she blinks down at her hand (for once, immobile) on the arm of the chair. It doesn't take long for Oshisyth to lose interest in the goings-on when the talking stops, and the green heaves herself lightly to her feet and skitters out to the ledge, the tip of her tail pointedly bumping against Issa's chair along the way. But her rider stays, staring, silent, still. She's easily roused when Roa's question breaks in, however, her eyes flicking up to the weyrwoman. Her laugh is a mere breathy snort now, introducing her response. "I don't know. Doubt it. I kind of tried to... stay away from the subject after that, though."
"Right. Of course." Roa chuckles weakly. "I don't know what he'd do, besides sneer, I guess just...be careful. No unnecessary risks, no more islands visits after this last, and...try to resist the urge to fess up." The last is maybe a request and maybe just a tease.
Issa's smile is weak as well, but it's there nonetheless. "He hasn't gotten it out of me yet," she points out with a mock pride threading through the statement. After showing off that limp grin for a second or two more, she drops it, opting to vacantly stare at the floor at Roa's feet again. "I don't know, Roa, maybe I should just... end it now," the greenrider says, her hand clenching across the arm of the chair though her voice betrays nothing but a detached logic for the situation. "We both know it's going to end. Maybe it'd be for the best if it ended before he even has the chance to find out." Logical, yes, but it lacks conviction. Her heart isn't in it.
The little weyrwoman arches an eyebrow. "You don't want to," she says simply, "and it'll become a huge mess. You'll try and push him away, he'll want to know why, everyone will get hurt and be miserable. You'll stare at his boots for a while and then some chance encounter will result in frantic makeup sex, and not only will you be back together, but you'll be struck with the overwhelming urge to come clean so it can never come between you again." Roa pauses for breath, then shakes her head. "Keep him, try and be smart, at least give me a little warning if you think he suspects or you want to see if he'll join."
Issa squirms under the truth of Roa's little speech, neglecting to meet Roa's gaze until the end, when she slips a quiet, drawn, "Yeah," into that slight pause. What starts as a glance catches and persists, and before she knows it she's been pulled back in to staring at Roa's face. With a jetted breath through her nose, she responds, "He won't join. But he won't suspect either. I won't let him." The tension that found its way slowly into Issa's posture begins to sink away again.
"All right," is all that Roa really has to say about that. "Just let me know if that changes."
"Okay," Issa offers quietly, blankly, eyebrows twitching ever so slightly downward at some unvoiced thought. It takes her a mere beat after that assent to summon up that same faint grin again. "We have a final trip to plan for then," she says, not even bothering to make the change of subject subtle. "I know Ashwin and Jensen are back, but... well, if you have any letters you want to write." The greenrider's shoulders lift in a slight shrug at the light suggestion, gaze lingering to gauge Roa's reaction.
Roa's reply is flat and simple. "No," a small shake of her head. "No letters." And then she falls silent to hear Issa's thoughts.
Fade Out
Time: Day 17, Month 9, Turn 2
Players: Roa, Issa, and Oshisyth
Scene: The two sympathizers discuss what to do, now that the Instigators have royally screwed up.
Autumn comes without much warning and from one day to the next, the air is cold, the leaves have turned, and snow becomes a promise rather than a memory. It is in this crisp season that Tialith makes one of her swift descents onto Oshisyth's ledge, depositing her bundled rider before winging away again to find a patch of pale sunlight. Roa begins to unwind her scarf as she steps into the inner weyr. "Issa?" she calls. "I'm here."
"Come in, come in." The answer comes from the sitting area, where, in front of a cheerily burning fire, Issa stands with her head bent over a hide held at arms length. A few piles sitting in a neat row across the top of the wooden chest mark the origin of that one in her hand, formation marks scrawled across all of the visible ones, at least. Her eyes don't lift to welcome the weyrwoman just yet. She's too busy poring over the writing to give more than a distracted wave to urge Roa forward into the weyr. Oshisyth compensates for the lack of manners, issuing her customary two-tone greeting from the position she's taken, curled behind Issa and peering over her shoulder curiously. The greenrider then drops the hide to her side and sighs, blue eyes flipping up to refocus (after a few swift blinks) on Roa. "A Weyr council," Issa states, letting the breathlessness of the sigh infiltrate her words. Straight to business, it seems.
Roa's eyes travel over to the formations almost immediately, curiosity coloring her expression. Oshisyth is given a nod and a warm smile. "Hello there," she murmurs before moving closer to the greenrider. For the assessment, there is a nod. "A Weyr council. I could absolutely kick them. All of them. Very hard." The 'them' is not clarified, but, does it need to be? "What were they -thinking-?"
Issa sends the hide she's holding down to its pile with a heavy toss, scattering the stack away from its neat lines with a ruffling smack. "They can't have been thinking at all," is her assertion, voiced as she stalks slowly over to the chair. "How," and here she breaks to pivot and fall into the chair with another weighted sigh, "can they have thought that a good idea? I told them. We need to move slowly, be patient and see... but no. They have to align themselves with a woman who's been terrorizing the Weyr for months." Through the venting, Issa has enough mind to flick her fingers at the sofa, a wordless invitation for Roa to sit, though it's the only effort she gives to her hostess obligations.
"No. They were thinking. They were idiots, but they had their reasons." Roa wanders over to the couch and sinks down. She leans back, eyes closing and hands coming up to cover her face. It is for this reason that her next words, quiet anyhow, are muffled. "It's my fault, actually."
Issa pulls up her legs to join her on the chair, feet curled up next to her as her knees fall against the arm of the chair. In the process of hastily sweeping a curl away from her forehead, her movement is stunted and her hand hovers instead beside her temple. Muffled though they are, those words seem to have been caught. "How so?" she queries in the break. The gesture is completed moments later, but it's smoother, more controlled than before, without the twitchy annoyance with which it began.
"I made a deal with Aivey," Roa confesses softly. "She wasn't going to give up E'sere, so I offered her something. Information. About her father." Roa's hands come away from her face and fall into her lap. "Her father's name is Derek. He's an Instigator and he was a guard at High Reaches Hold. He was one of the nasty ones. Aivey idolized him. Jensen was the one who turned Derek in all those turns ago. That was the connection, and her motivation for the attacks. We agreed that she would tell the whole truth when the Harpers spoke to her if, after the trial, I told her what I remembered of Derek. And if I..." and here Roa cannot help but grimace, "gave him a letter. From her."
Roa's grimace is met with a thinning of Issa's eyes, subtle but noticeable. "Letter," she repeats softly, the word drifting away from her with a cool undertone. "The letters that I," there's the beginning of a stress on the pronoun before the entire word is clipped off, strangled into a split second of silence before the rest comes, "handed over." The questioning intonation is missing, making it more of a statement, a realization. "Well, that's good to know, Roa," she finishes with a sharp, sour note.
"No," says Roa with a shake of her head. "It was my mess. I gave that one over myself. When I brought back the guards. I had to write it for her, because she couldn't. It didn't say much. 'Dear father. I did my best. I only hope it was enough. I don't regret anything. I love you. Your daughter. Aivey.' Frankly, I didn't think Derek would care. Nor did I think they would be mad enough to...obviously, I was wrong."
Those thinned eyes relax a degree when Roa assures Issa that the greenrider didn't have a hand in the escape of her own attacker. But that hint of sourness in her tone is stickier, threading through the echo, "Obviously," as she settles her chin onto her hand to ponder the contents that have been spelled out for her. Fingers lift and tap along her cheek, pattering out an irregular beat. "The daughter of an exile. It makes sense," she muses, the acidic quality of her voice replaced by simple thoughtfulness, eyes drifting idly over the piles of hides. "So you think E'sere went there as well?" But she answers her own question before Roa has a chance. "He would've had to."
Roa's "Yes," mingles with Issa's "he would have had to" and finally the goldrider lifts her head and opens her eyes. "The daughter of an exile," she agrees softly. "I think I...maybe there was some sympathy there. Whatever else horrible she'd done, she was going to die and never even be able to know him. I was going there anyhow. It seemed harmless, and it felt right. So, I screwed up pretty nicely there." Her head flops back so Roa can stare up at the ceiling, blinking thoughtfully.
"Well, you're not the only one to have screwed up. You can rest easy there." Issa's head tilts back too, but just far enough to lean against the cushion, keeping Roa in her sights. "I'm the one who gave E'sere the coordinates," she says, a confession of her own, made with a wry, wearied smile. "What a pair we are," she continues after a sighing pause. "Both duped into aiding and abetting. We're perfect for each other, Roa."
"At least I'm in good company, then," Roa offers with a weak smile. But then she groans. "Shells, I have no clue how to fix this. We can't go there anymore." Roa lifts her head again. "-You- can't go there any more. We've got to cut off contact now. Diya will have to find another way to reach us. They're on their own with a hatching and baby dragons and...fuck! Those idiots!" There aren't too many places or people one is allowed to be angry about instigators in front of, after all. Issa, it seems, gets the honors.
Issa has lapsed into a quiet, pensive stare at Roa's feet during the weyrwoman's ranting, but she stirs at the expletive, letting her eyes lift slowly to the younger woman's face, an amused little grin creeping slowly into place. "I have to. At least once more, Roa. We have to let them know what's happened. The Weyr council is going to take some sort of action, that's for sure. And we can't just let it happen without giving them any sort of warning." Another flicker of tappings rains down on her cheek once again, and, more quietly, she adds, "For Diya's sake, if nothing else."
"Issa, I don't know that we can afford it. They're -there- now. We can't...don't you think they might be anticipating such a contact? Planning for it?" Roa is frowning softly, her words unhappy. But necessary.
"Probably," Issa concedes quickly with a light shrug, lifting her hand away from her face and dropping it to curl atop the chair's arm, rubbing it there with a slow, lazy motion. "But I have to make sure. I won't speak to anyone but Diya," then, with a flicked glance to Roa, she adds casually, "and J'lor. Discreet as always." Stubborn as always, she speaks as if it were already decided she would go, already a sure thing that she'd see that island at least once more. "/You/ can't afford it," she adds, "I can. No one notices if I spend an extra hour on sweeps. Trust me." Delivered emphatically, the last piece gets emphasized more by the tiny pause she takes, her eyes swinging to take in the surrounding weyr again. "Plus, we can't just cut Diya off without warning. Plans have to be made." And thus surfaces, perhaps, the real reason.
At the mention of J'lor, Roa rolls her eyes with a small snort. "If I were you, I'd stick to Diya," she says flatly. "She has some semblance of common sense left. I need you to promise me, though, that this is the last time. You'll take the verdict of the Weyr Council to them, leave some thoughts with Diya, and that's all." She leans forward, blue eyes intent. "Promise, Issa."
Issa meets that intent gaze from the weyrwoman for several blank seconds before she responds. And even then, it's only with a bland, "I promise," that is distinctly without the conviction one would hope for. But there's no defiance in it either, which bodes well, at least. Unblinking, she stares across the space between them for a moment longer before looking away. Oshisyth has, in the interim, been idly observing the effects that a talon has on stone when scraped across it many, many times. Though the scrabbling sound has yet been soft and subdued, the green gives a sudden, stronger scraping on the heels of that promise that sends out a nails-on-chalkboard like screeching. With a shiver that gives rise to a grimace, Issa shoots her dragon a look that lingers until a draconic whuff ripples across the top hides and the talon-scraping stops entirely. "Probably for the best," is what Issa adds then, much more resigned.
"Thank you," is offered quietly, Roa's gaze holding Issa's for as long as Issa's holds Roa. And then there's that awful sound and some cringing and ear-covering happens. "Ah! How do they always manage to find the most awful things..." but the weyrwoman is smiling and shaking her head. "It is for the best, but...what made -you- say that?"
Issa has a grin ready for that emphasis Roa puts on that pronoun, but it's decidedly empty and devoid of mirth. "Oh, it's nothing," she insists with a slow and steady shaking of her head. She focuses intently then on the arm of the chair as her fingers beginning to pick at a patch rubbed bare by turns of use. But that insistent tone is contradicted as she clarifies that 'nothing'. "It's just... Reyce." Her tone is deceptively dismissive and she even gives a casual little shrug to increase the effect.
And Reyce being nothing is apparently something, because there's a flicker of a frown now, and Roa has pushed herself up straight. "Do you...you think he suspects?"
And Roa succeeds in bringing back Issa's cheer, for the greenrider has to laugh at that, the chuckling beginning with a strong burst and trickling away into her words. "No," she begins with a vehement shake of her head, "Faranth, no. /No./" That last stress weights her tone, grinding the laughter away and bringing her back to the realm of serious conversation. "It's just..." She seems on the verge of adding another 'nothing' on at the end, but when she turns her eyes up to meet Roa's, something stops that. Quelling any remains of a smile, she presses her mouth into thin line. "He tried to uncover Instigators at Benden. To turn them in. He doesn't know anything, so there's no trouble, but..." Heavy implications trail off of that last word, dragging on the silence that follows.
"But if he did, he might," Roa finishes for the greenrider. She rests her elbows on her knees, clasping her hands and leaning forward to rest her mouth against her knuckles. She sits that way for a couple minutes. "Was he dating one at the time?" she asks after a spell.
Issa simply nods over the ending Roa provides, quietly letting it be and refraining from adding anything of her own. As long as Roa holds the silence, she too is quiet, letting her head lean against the back of the chair as she blinks down at her hand (for once, immobile) on the arm of the chair. It doesn't take long for Oshisyth to lose interest in the goings-on when the talking stops, and the green heaves herself lightly to her feet and skitters out to the ledge, the tip of her tail pointedly bumping against Issa's chair along the way. But her rider stays, staring, silent, still. She's easily roused when Roa's question breaks in, however, her eyes flicking up to the weyrwoman. Her laugh is a mere breathy snort now, introducing her response. "I don't know. Doubt it. I kind of tried to... stay away from the subject after that, though."
"Right. Of course." Roa chuckles weakly. "I don't know what he'd do, besides sneer, I guess just...be careful. No unnecessary risks, no more islands visits after this last, and...try to resist the urge to fess up." The last is maybe a request and maybe just a tease.
Issa's smile is weak as well, but it's there nonetheless. "He hasn't gotten it out of me yet," she points out with a mock pride threading through the statement. After showing off that limp grin for a second or two more, she drops it, opting to vacantly stare at the floor at Roa's feet again. "I don't know, Roa, maybe I should just... end it now," the greenrider says, her hand clenching across the arm of the chair though her voice betrays nothing but a detached logic for the situation. "We both know it's going to end. Maybe it'd be for the best if it ended before he even has the chance to find out." Logical, yes, but it lacks conviction. Her heart isn't in it.
The little weyrwoman arches an eyebrow. "You don't want to," she says simply, "and it'll become a huge mess. You'll try and push him away, he'll want to know why, everyone will get hurt and be miserable. You'll stare at his boots for a while and then some chance encounter will result in frantic makeup sex, and not only will you be back together, but you'll be struck with the overwhelming urge to come clean so it can never come between you again." Roa pauses for breath, then shakes her head. "Keep him, try and be smart, at least give me a little warning if you think he suspects or you want to see if he'll join."
Issa squirms under the truth of Roa's little speech, neglecting to meet Roa's gaze until the end, when she slips a quiet, drawn, "Yeah," into that slight pause. What starts as a glance catches and persists, and before she knows it she's been pulled back in to staring at Roa's face. With a jetted breath through her nose, she responds, "He won't join. But he won't suspect either. I won't let him." The tension that found its way slowly into Issa's posture begins to sink away again.
"All right," is all that Roa really has to say about that. "Just let me know if that changes."
"Okay," Issa offers quietly, blankly, eyebrows twitching ever so slightly downward at some unvoiced thought. It takes her a mere beat after that assent to summon up that same faint grin again. "We have a final trip to plan for then," she says, not even bothering to make the change of subject subtle. "I know Ashwin and Jensen are back, but... well, if you have any letters you want to write." The greenrider's shoulders lift in a slight shrug at the light suggestion, gaze lingering to gauge Roa's reaction.
Roa's reply is flat and simple. "No," a small shake of her head. "No letters." And then she falls silent to hear Issa's thoughts.
Fade Out