Another heart breaks, I am so much older than I can take, and my affection, well, it comes and goes…
{{Backdated to about 23:00 on December 31, 2009; LOCKED to Suzie.}}It's wearing on toward midnight, inexorably pulling the world toward a new year and a new decade, and J... is slinking through the Kashtta Tower as a dog, head held low and a long gnawing pressure courting his gut. Maybe it's hyperbole that he's shaken more than he was since an
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Comments 17
She looks tired and unwell, but not much more than usual.
"Come in," she says, and moves away from the door. She rummages in a drawer for a moment, and a pair of new sweatpants -- large and roomy, with a drawstring waist, and tags still on them -- are tossed on her bed. A minute later, an oversized t-shirt follows them -- this one not new, and smelling of fabric softener and faintly of her.
"I'm going to assume you're here because you've got something to say, and not because there's an emergency. So you might as well make yourself..." she looks over at the clearly miserable dog, "as comfortable as you're likely to get, anyway."
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Is not the thing he should be fixating on right now. Especially not when he's got no idea what's going to happen after he says what he needs to.
He shifts back, pulling on the clothing in uneasy silence, and then... crouches down again anyway, forearms on his knees, neck low, communicating nonengagement and harmlessness and even if submission isn't exactly there, there's a hint that it wants to be.
Right.
This is the part where he's supposed to be saying something.
...he's absolutely certain he had something to say.
He opens his mouth, but words fail to materialize, so after a moment, he shuts it again. Wonderful. So now he's wormed his way into Suzie's room, and has nothing to show for it.
Idiot....if he can't say something that'll make this right, if he can ( ... )
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"I know you are," she says, once he's done. "You stopped. I don't know if you were in any state to comprehend what I was saying at the time, so I'll say it again: thank you for that. If you hadn't..."
Could she have burned that bridge? Really?
Yes, part of her answers. You've done it before. Though that was before she was with Thane. Before she was broken.
"If you hadn't, things would be very different right now," she finishes. She's not sure whether she means that she wouldn't let him in her room in the first place, or that she wouldn't have a choice. Either way, that's not a possibility she wants to spend that much time considering.
Either way, there's more to this than just the apology.
"They made you a weapon with a built-in defence mechanism. Is that more or less what you're trying to tell me?"
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The question takes him more by surprise than it should, and it shows, for a moment, in the lines of his shoulders. He doesn't know what he's trying to say. Nothing seems to change things, in any case; nothing seems to help. Maybe this is selfish, his need to be recognized, understood, above all else. It's a very Thane impulse, that.
"No," he says, quietly. Then, after a moment, "I don't know. Could say it could probably happen again. ...probably will, unless-"
He shakes his head. Unless what? The Agency doesn't make its agents to be deprogrammed.
In light of that, any apology means... almost nothing.
"I don't know why I'm here," he admits, holding down the rising fear in his stomach. He's here because he's trapped. "I'm not asking for-"
Amnesty. Forgiveness. Understanding. Is he ( ... )
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