Fic: Intersection (S&S Prompt fic)
Title: Intersection
Author:
lost_spook
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 3066
Characters/Pairings:Silver (Silver/OFC)
Warnings Element/Human (thus inevitable imbalance); vague refs to an unhappy marriage.
Summary: There’s a stranger in her bedroom, stealing her belongings. What she’s not sure of is why she’s helping him… (Pre-canon, 1908).
Prompt 72: silver - Confession of love & Tragic past.
Intersection
time remembered bear witness to time required,
the positive and the negative ways through time
embrace and encourage each other
in a brief moment of intersection (WH Auden)
***
She’s not sure how it happened this way, how she’s alone with a stranger in her bedroom.
“This may be enough,” he says, examining one of the candlesticks they brought with them from downstairs. The object has all his attention. “But anything else you can spare would be useful. We don’t want that thing getting loose.”
He still hasn’t explained what it is he wants to keep trapped in the next room, but she walks across to her dressing table, pulls open the drawers and takes out her cases of jewellery. She opens them up and he takes the plain necklaces of silver and gold - chains, she thinks. She always thinks of them as chains.
And is it worse, she wonders, as if she’s observing events from a distance, as she so often is, to be aiding a thief to steal her own possessions or that’s she suddenly disappointed that that’s all he wants. She’d had a very different impression when he’d taken her earrings earlier.
“Now, let’s see,” he says, picking up one of the candlesticks again, and as she watches it becomes a long, flexible silver strip in his hands.
“How…?” she asks before she catches herself. It’s not as if she hasn’t known he wasn’t normal from the moment he walked in through the dining room wall. And he isn’t the first strange thing she’s come across in the last few days. She puts a hand to her forehead, pressing away the beginnings of yet another headache. That’s another thing that keeps happening of late.
He glances over at her but then merely repeats his action with the other candlestick.
She takes a deep breath and moves over towards the door, as if that might make it better. Is she disappointed? She doesn’t want any complications; she doesn’t want anything of this nature. She had merely thought for a while that this might be something apart from everything else, something - She closes her eyes, shutting away the thought and fading back into the numbness, the perfect façade she hides behind. She raises her chin. She still has her pride, if nothing else and why she thought -
Well, she tells herself, as long as he leaves her alone, as he always does now, has done for so many years, that is all she wants.
She opens her eyes and gasps in shock to find the stranger is standing opposite her, too close for comfort. She has his attention now, though she doesn’t know why. He’s looking at her with a concern that she can’t explain: it isn’t for her, she’s coldly certain of that.
“I wonder,” he murmurs, still staring at her. He catches hold of her wrist. “Perhaps… I suppose something may have drawn it here in the first place.”
She still has enough self-possession to glare back at him. “You have what you wanted. You must excuse me - my husband may wake any moment and I should -”
“No,” says the man, now returning to the strips of metal and the jewellery she’s let him have. “He won’t.”
She holds onto the door handle tightly, frozen there. “Whatever do you mean?” she asks, and keeps her voice as light as she dares.
“He won’t wake up, not for some time yet,” he says, looking up at her. “And then - when you mentioned him - that was it, wasn’t it?”
The door is a real and solid thing behind her. She leans against it and hovers on the point of saying things she’s never said. She doesn’t know what those things will be - whether she will weep, or give him an icy objection. Maybe she will run, or scream -
“Or part of it, perhaps,” he says, and turns away again, losing interest.
She closes her eyes briefly and then rubs her wrist where he held it. She’s let down again. She won’t let that show; she never does. “Well,” she says, “even if that is true, there are the servants and this is hardly -”
“Haven’t you noticed?” There’s an edge of something in his voice now - judgement, perhaps. “They aren’t here, not any more. That creature in the other room - what do you think has been happening?”
“I - I -” She draws in her breath and puts her hands to her face. She can’t remember. She knows it must be Thursday evening, but she can’t remember the pattern of the day, only a vague idea of it, as if she merely dreamt it. “I don’t know. Something is dreadfully wrong, isn’t it?”
He gets to his feet again and gives her a more sympathetic look this time. “Yes. You’re too close, of course. You would have been next.”
“Mary,” she says, fighting to remember, to register the absences. “Chambers. What do you mean? What has happened to them? Are they - are they dead?”
He shakes his head at her. “No, no. I shouldn’t think so. Not precisely. Now, what I need you to do is to stay here and keep this door shut. You mustn’t leave, no matter what you hear or see. You do understand?”
“I understand the instruction,” she says, attempting to regain some authority. This is her house, after all, and he is only a stranger; a thief she’s been aiding and abetting. “I don’t understand why I should -”
“Because you want to stay alive - I expect.” He faces her again. “And you certainly don’t want to meet what’s currently occupying your spare room.”
He walked in through the wall, she thinks, and nods. Sometimes arguing is only a very unintelligent thing to do.
He gives a brief laugh and kisses her. “Yes, you’ll do that, won’t you?”
And then he’s gone without her even seeing how or where he went. Of course, it’s all nonsense and she should go in search of someone else, possibly even a policeman, but she doesn’t. She moves to the door and turns the key in the lock, pretending she’s not still so very aware of his touch.
There’s a sound from the next room, and she starts. It’s not something she can quite describe - a howling cry is the best she can do - and it goes through her. She shivers and as she moves over towards the bed, the electric lights - the new electric lights that he is so proud of - fizzle out and fade away.
She can’t help herself - she loses her customary dignity and gives a muted exclamation and half leaps onto the bed. It’s not entirely dark - there’s a low light from the fire in the grate - but suddenly the room seems unfamiliar; this place where she’s been in darkness without thought or fear so many times before. Always honest, she wearily corrects herself; no, not without fear, never quite, even though it’s been years since he troubled her. He’s found compensation elsewhere, and she’s glad of it. He said once that she should do the same. She doesn’t trust that he means that, and even if he does, it’s not what she wants. She prefers to be alone.
There’s more sound from the other room and she pushes back against the pillows and the headboard and pulls the bedclothes about her. It sounds as though things are being thrown about and she hears another howl. The inhuman note in it turns her cold and she stops to wonder for the first time how something that sounds so terrifying can be stopped with only candlesticks and necklaces.
She considers running, but not for long. After all, if there was somewhere to go, she would have run away before. She huddles there on the bed, heedless of her dress for once, her arms around her knees and presses her mouth into her hand.
She wakes later, finding herself in an odd sideways position at the top of the bed amongst a muddle of the pillows and counterpane; her dress no doubt shockingly rumpled. It’s even darker now; the fire has died away.
Something moves in the room and her breath catches in her throat, although she’s unsure which of her nightmares has taken shape. She strains to listen, but her heart beats too loudly for her to hear.
“I didn’t need these, after all,” says the stranger - he’s back again. He sounds as if returning stolen property in the middle of the night is a perfectly reasonable course of action. Then she feels the mattress dip as he sits on the bed. She can see him if she focuses: a grey shape in the dark room. He leans over and presses a handful of hard, fine chains into her hand. “I thought you might want them back.”
She blinks, still confused by muddled and fearful dreams, and tightens her hand around the trinkets until it hurts.
He moves and lights the nearby candle, and then smiles at her. “It’s gone now. My colleagues - well. It’s done.”
She should demand explanations, she thinks. She should at least ask what has happened to the rest of the household. She takes a deep breath and sits up a little. “The others -?”
“They might feel unwell in the morning, perhaps, but they’re all where they should be. They won’t even remember.”
“And it’s - it’s safe now?”
He nods. “I did say, didn’t I?”
Somehow she feels foolish for asking. “Yes, but you - well, you hardly explained. You just gave me dire warnings and then you - you left.” She turns her head away from the candlelight. That came out oddly and she can’t help but colour. She knows she’s betrayed herself; she hopes he doesn’t.
“Did I?”
She tries to straighten herself out, but she’s stiff and still too entangled. However, she manages a spark of anger. “Yes, you did. You haven’t told me anything - not even who or what you are!”
“I’m Silver,” he says. “And it is all finished. They’re sleeping now, but it’ll all be as usual in the morning.”
Silver. It isn’t a name, or not a real one, and it isn’t the morning yet; nothing is as usual. For her, this is still the same strange day where time has not behaved as it should. The house remains silent, as if under a spell. That isn’t perhaps so very far away from the truth, she thinks. They’re all sleeping. If something were to happen now, it would be different - it wouldn’t count. It’s childish reasoning, but it feels true.
He moves, and she knows he’s going to leave again, for good this time. Maybe when she wakes in the morning this will all prove to have been a dream. It will all be for the best, of course.
“I -” She tries to say something, though and then stops. What could she possibly say? If being in this horridly improper situation isn’t encouragement enough, she thinks, what does one say? Please, do take advantage of me? She tries to laugh at herself.
Silver looks at her suddenly, and she turns dizzy from alarm at the idea that she has somehow spoken the words aloud. It’s another serious stare, but this time it is her he’s looking at. Then he smiles. “Yes,” he says, “why not?”
And if she didn’t say it, then how did he know? Can he read her mind? It's a frightening idea that doesn’t seem as improbable as it should, but he distracts her; gently brushing back a stray hair out of her face. Then he kisses her again, much as he did before, but this time she’s turning light-headed already.
She reaches out a hand to him instinctively, then hesitates, still unsure. He notes the movement, though and takes hold of both of her hands with a brief amused glance at her and then places them against his chest. She catches at his jacket and leans forward, holding on, because if she stops to think -
He kisses her again and then moves his hand to her hair and, as if all the pins have fallen out at once, she feels it uncoiling and falling down her back. She shouldn’t she knows be this dizzy at such light touches, but if he can read her mind and transform metal, perhaps it’s not surprising. This is probably very unwise, she tells herself belatedly, but she closes her mind to that thought, and kisses him - she’s shocked at her own daring and he’s amused at that, she can tell. She doesn’t want to consider again: this is one moment, one night outside of time and reality and she wants only not to be the dutiful person she has been for every regular hour of her life.
It is still dreadfully wrong, she supposes, but how strange it is that this is the sin and not the other -
“No, no,” he says, suddenly and puts a hand over hers, as she holds onto him still - possibly too tightly, she realises. “Not that, I think.”
She’s trembling and not at all sure of the cause. “You are reading my mind - you must be.” At least until now her thoughts have been her own, the only things that truly were. She does not like to be so suddenly transparent.
Silver puts his hand to her face and kisses her twice more and then touches one of her curls, winds it lightly around his finger and follows it down and further, trailing his hand along her front. “Oh, I don’t need to read your mind,” he says with a wicked look, and then laughs at her.
Yes, he seems to know all her very human reactions, but he’s only the same - amused, pleased with himself, maybe, but that’s all, not - She catches her breath; she could list her feelings now in paragraphs she despises from cheap literature, or in tired phrases that only now make full sense. It seems, she thinks, rather distantly, unfair somehow, although to which of them, she’s unsure. She did ask and perhaps -
“No,” says Silver, interrupting her thoughts, and he’s laughing again, but it’s different this time; there’s more warmth in it. “Really, no.” Then he pulls her in closer, and then down with him - and it’s only later that she realises that he still hasn’t answered her other question.
The darkness is shifting to a grey light now, but she’s clinging onto wakefulness for as long as she can. She lifts her head as he moves and then sits up, startled to find that he’s suddenly fully dressed and now in a completely different suit to the one he had earlier. That was a well-cut, grey suit. He’d worn a deep red cravat. This is darker, plainer… He looks like a city clerk and that makes her want to laugh; it’s more improbable than everything else.
“I knew you weren’t real,” she says, and thinks that she recognises her own voice again for the first time in this very peculiar day.
Silver raises his eyebrows and she thinks that he actually looks offended. “I would have thought -”
“This,” she says, and tugs at the dark tie.
He smiles, and carefully removes the article from her hold, though he lets his hand rest on hers. “Yes. But still -”
“You’re going to vanish any moment,” she explains, lying back down. “I know that. So you can’t be real, can you?”
He pauses, and then kisses her hand before releasing it. “Well, it would be rather awkward if I was here in the morning, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” she agrees, since there is no gain in lying. She knows she’s going to sleep and she’s sure this will all be a dream of some kind when she wakes again. She doesn’t mind that, not truly - it was in part the idea - but she fears that it will rapidly fade forever from her mind, the way a dream does. She’s only surprised he’s still here. “It would be terribly scandalous - and very inconvenient.”
Silver laughs. Then he catches her off-guard again, answering the question she didn’t ask. “I don’t seem to be needed.” He doesn’t add ‘luckily for you’; he doesn’t have to.
“What was in the other room?” she asks. “This is where I live; I should know.”
“You don’t want to.”
She opens her mouth to object: after all, knowing cannot be worse than sitting in the dark and wondering.
“I would have to show you,” says Silver. “And that… I think you don’t need any more nightmares.”
She looks away, irrationally ashamed that her private troubles are so obvious. She thinks instead to ask something she failed to before: “Did it hurt you?”
“No,” he says. “No. And,” he adds, as if in payment for her concern, “it’s not reading your thoughts, not exactly. But - like this - it’s rather difficult not to pick up some things.”
She bites her lip, and wonders about asking more. She knows her reasons for doing this; she’s not at all sure of his. It’s not in any way a solution of course, only the most temporary escape. She looks up as she thinks it and sees his reaction - he did hear that - and for a moment they are in complete accord. It is no doubt not all of the answer, but it is in part and that will suffice.
“You’re very…” he hesitates and then laughs at her again, kisses her once more. “Very sweet.”
And that’s all perfectly nice, but it’s also a closing down of the conversation; the last thing she remembers before she finally falls asleep.
When she wakes again it’s fully morning. The sun is trying to break in through the heavy curtains, enough for her to see that her room looks exactly as it should. She sits up. There aren’t any empty jewellery cases out on the dressing table, and her gown isn’t lying somewhere on the floor. The house feels… She draws in a breath because the change isn’t something she can explain in words, but there’s more sound and life surrounding her - a shadow has gone.
And then Mary arrives, with morning tea and inconsequential discussion about the bright weather, and which clothes she should wear today. She doesn’t seem to have any idea that yesterday was anything other out of the usual, and there are no remarks about unwonted carelessness to dresses.
Yesterday, it seems, was like any other day in this house. She’s the only one who knows otherwise.
***
Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there:
Author:
lost_spook
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 3066
Characters/Pairings:Silver (Silver/OFC)
Warnings Element/Human (thus inevitable imbalance); vague refs to an unhappy marriage.
Summary: There’s a stranger in her bedroom, stealing her belongings. What she’s not sure of is why she’s helping him… (Pre-canon, 1908).
Prompt 72: silver - Confession of love & Tragic past.
Intersection
time remembered bear witness to time required,
the positive and the negative ways through time
embrace and encourage each other
in a brief moment of intersection (WH Auden)
***
She’s not sure how it happened this way, how she’s alone with a stranger in her bedroom.
“This may be enough,” he says, examining one of the candlesticks they brought with them from downstairs. The object has all his attention. “But anything else you can spare would be useful. We don’t want that thing getting loose.”
He still hasn’t explained what it is he wants to keep trapped in the next room, but she walks across to her dressing table, pulls open the drawers and takes out her cases of jewellery. She opens them up and he takes the plain necklaces of silver and gold - chains, she thinks. She always thinks of them as chains.
And is it worse, she wonders, as if she’s observing events from a distance, as she so often is, to be aiding a thief to steal her own possessions or that’s she suddenly disappointed that that’s all he wants. She’d had a very different impression when he’d taken her earrings earlier.
“Now, let’s see,” he says, picking up one of the candlesticks again, and as she watches it becomes a long, flexible silver strip in his hands.
“How…?” she asks before she catches herself. It’s not as if she hasn’t known he wasn’t normal from the moment he walked in through the dining room wall. And he isn’t the first strange thing she’s come across in the last few days. She puts a hand to her forehead, pressing away the beginnings of yet another headache. That’s another thing that keeps happening of late.
He glances over at her but then merely repeats his action with the other candlestick.
She takes a deep breath and moves over towards the door, as if that might make it better. Is she disappointed? She doesn’t want any complications; she doesn’t want anything of this nature. She had merely thought for a while that this might be something apart from everything else, something - She closes her eyes, shutting away the thought and fading back into the numbness, the perfect façade she hides behind. She raises her chin. She still has her pride, if nothing else and why she thought -
Well, she tells herself, as long as he leaves her alone, as he always does now, has done for so many years, that is all she wants.
She opens her eyes and gasps in shock to find the stranger is standing opposite her, too close for comfort. She has his attention now, though she doesn’t know why. He’s looking at her with a concern that she can’t explain: it isn’t for her, she’s coldly certain of that.
“I wonder,” he murmurs, still staring at her. He catches hold of her wrist. “Perhaps… I suppose something may have drawn it here in the first place.”
She still has enough self-possession to glare back at him. “You have what you wanted. You must excuse me - my husband may wake any moment and I should -”
“No,” says the man, now returning to the strips of metal and the jewellery she’s let him have. “He won’t.”
She holds onto the door handle tightly, frozen there. “Whatever do you mean?” she asks, and keeps her voice as light as she dares.
“He won’t wake up, not for some time yet,” he says, looking up at her. “And then - when you mentioned him - that was it, wasn’t it?”
The door is a real and solid thing behind her. She leans against it and hovers on the point of saying things she’s never said. She doesn’t know what those things will be - whether she will weep, or give him an icy objection. Maybe she will run, or scream -
“Or part of it, perhaps,” he says, and turns away again, losing interest.
She closes her eyes briefly and then rubs her wrist where he held it. She’s let down again. She won’t let that show; she never does. “Well,” she says, “even if that is true, there are the servants and this is hardly -”
“Haven’t you noticed?” There’s an edge of something in his voice now - judgement, perhaps. “They aren’t here, not any more. That creature in the other room - what do you think has been happening?”
“I - I -” She draws in her breath and puts her hands to her face. She can’t remember. She knows it must be Thursday evening, but she can’t remember the pattern of the day, only a vague idea of it, as if she merely dreamt it. “I don’t know. Something is dreadfully wrong, isn’t it?”
He gets to his feet again and gives her a more sympathetic look this time. “Yes. You’re too close, of course. You would have been next.”
“Mary,” she says, fighting to remember, to register the absences. “Chambers. What do you mean? What has happened to them? Are they - are they dead?”
He shakes his head at her. “No, no. I shouldn’t think so. Not precisely. Now, what I need you to do is to stay here and keep this door shut. You mustn’t leave, no matter what you hear or see. You do understand?”
“I understand the instruction,” she says, attempting to regain some authority. This is her house, after all, and he is only a stranger; a thief she’s been aiding and abetting. “I don’t understand why I should -”
“Because you want to stay alive - I expect.” He faces her again. “And you certainly don’t want to meet what’s currently occupying your spare room.”
He walked in through the wall, she thinks, and nods. Sometimes arguing is only a very unintelligent thing to do.
He gives a brief laugh and kisses her. “Yes, you’ll do that, won’t you?”
And then he’s gone without her even seeing how or where he went. Of course, it’s all nonsense and she should go in search of someone else, possibly even a policeman, but she doesn’t. She moves to the door and turns the key in the lock, pretending she’s not still so very aware of his touch.
There’s a sound from the next room, and she starts. It’s not something she can quite describe - a howling cry is the best she can do - and it goes through her. She shivers and as she moves over towards the bed, the electric lights - the new electric lights that he is so proud of - fizzle out and fade away.
She can’t help herself - she loses her customary dignity and gives a muted exclamation and half leaps onto the bed. It’s not entirely dark - there’s a low light from the fire in the grate - but suddenly the room seems unfamiliar; this place where she’s been in darkness without thought or fear so many times before. Always honest, she wearily corrects herself; no, not without fear, never quite, even though it’s been years since he troubled her. He’s found compensation elsewhere, and she’s glad of it. He said once that she should do the same. She doesn’t trust that he means that, and even if he does, it’s not what she wants. She prefers to be alone.
There’s more sound from the other room and she pushes back against the pillows and the headboard and pulls the bedclothes about her. It sounds as though things are being thrown about and she hears another howl. The inhuman note in it turns her cold and she stops to wonder for the first time how something that sounds so terrifying can be stopped with only candlesticks and necklaces.
She considers running, but not for long. After all, if there was somewhere to go, she would have run away before. She huddles there on the bed, heedless of her dress for once, her arms around her knees and presses her mouth into her hand.
She wakes later, finding herself in an odd sideways position at the top of the bed amongst a muddle of the pillows and counterpane; her dress no doubt shockingly rumpled. It’s even darker now; the fire has died away.
Something moves in the room and her breath catches in her throat, although she’s unsure which of her nightmares has taken shape. She strains to listen, but her heart beats too loudly for her to hear.
“I didn’t need these, after all,” says the stranger - he’s back again. He sounds as if returning stolen property in the middle of the night is a perfectly reasonable course of action. Then she feels the mattress dip as he sits on the bed. She can see him if she focuses: a grey shape in the dark room. He leans over and presses a handful of hard, fine chains into her hand. “I thought you might want them back.”
She blinks, still confused by muddled and fearful dreams, and tightens her hand around the trinkets until it hurts.
He moves and lights the nearby candle, and then smiles at her. “It’s gone now. My colleagues - well. It’s done.”
She should demand explanations, she thinks. She should at least ask what has happened to the rest of the household. She takes a deep breath and sits up a little. “The others -?”
“They might feel unwell in the morning, perhaps, but they’re all where they should be. They won’t even remember.”
“And it’s - it’s safe now?”
He nods. “I did say, didn’t I?”
Somehow she feels foolish for asking. “Yes, but you - well, you hardly explained. You just gave me dire warnings and then you - you left.” She turns her head away from the candlelight. That came out oddly and she can’t help but colour. She knows she’s betrayed herself; she hopes he doesn’t.
“Did I?”
She tries to straighten herself out, but she’s stiff and still too entangled. However, she manages a spark of anger. “Yes, you did. You haven’t told me anything - not even who or what you are!”
“I’m Silver,” he says. “And it is all finished. They’re sleeping now, but it’ll all be as usual in the morning.”
Silver. It isn’t a name, or not a real one, and it isn’t the morning yet; nothing is as usual. For her, this is still the same strange day where time has not behaved as it should. The house remains silent, as if under a spell. That isn’t perhaps so very far away from the truth, she thinks. They’re all sleeping. If something were to happen now, it would be different - it wouldn’t count. It’s childish reasoning, but it feels true.
He moves, and she knows he’s going to leave again, for good this time. Maybe when she wakes in the morning this will all prove to have been a dream. It will all be for the best, of course.
“I -” She tries to say something, though and then stops. What could she possibly say? If being in this horridly improper situation isn’t encouragement enough, she thinks, what does one say? Please, do take advantage of me? She tries to laugh at herself.
Silver looks at her suddenly, and she turns dizzy from alarm at the idea that she has somehow spoken the words aloud. It’s another serious stare, but this time it is her he’s looking at. Then he smiles. “Yes,” he says, “why not?”
And if she didn’t say it, then how did he know? Can he read her mind? It's a frightening idea that doesn’t seem as improbable as it should, but he distracts her; gently brushing back a stray hair out of her face. Then he kisses her again, much as he did before, but this time she’s turning light-headed already.
She reaches out a hand to him instinctively, then hesitates, still unsure. He notes the movement, though and takes hold of both of her hands with a brief amused glance at her and then places them against his chest. She catches at his jacket and leans forward, holding on, because if she stops to think -
He kisses her again and then moves his hand to her hair and, as if all the pins have fallen out at once, she feels it uncoiling and falling down her back. She shouldn’t she knows be this dizzy at such light touches, but if he can read her mind and transform metal, perhaps it’s not surprising. This is probably very unwise, she tells herself belatedly, but she closes her mind to that thought, and kisses him - she’s shocked at her own daring and he’s amused at that, she can tell. She doesn’t want to consider again: this is one moment, one night outside of time and reality and she wants only not to be the dutiful person she has been for every regular hour of her life.
It is still dreadfully wrong, she supposes, but how strange it is that this is the sin and not the other -
“No, no,” he says, suddenly and puts a hand over hers, as she holds onto him still - possibly too tightly, she realises. “Not that, I think.”
She’s trembling and not at all sure of the cause. “You are reading my mind - you must be.” At least until now her thoughts have been her own, the only things that truly were. She does not like to be so suddenly transparent.
Silver puts his hand to her face and kisses her twice more and then touches one of her curls, winds it lightly around his finger and follows it down and further, trailing his hand along her front. “Oh, I don’t need to read your mind,” he says with a wicked look, and then laughs at her.
Yes, he seems to know all her very human reactions, but he’s only the same - amused, pleased with himself, maybe, but that’s all, not - She catches her breath; she could list her feelings now in paragraphs she despises from cheap literature, or in tired phrases that only now make full sense. It seems, she thinks, rather distantly, unfair somehow, although to which of them, she’s unsure. She did ask and perhaps -
“No,” says Silver, interrupting her thoughts, and he’s laughing again, but it’s different this time; there’s more warmth in it. “Really, no.” Then he pulls her in closer, and then down with him - and it’s only later that she realises that he still hasn’t answered her other question.
The darkness is shifting to a grey light now, but she’s clinging onto wakefulness for as long as she can. She lifts her head as he moves and then sits up, startled to find that he’s suddenly fully dressed and now in a completely different suit to the one he had earlier. That was a well-cut, grey suit. He’d worn a deep red cravat. This is darker, plainer… He looks like a city clerk and that makes her want to laugh; it’s more improbable than everything else.
“I knew you weren’t real,” she says, and thinks that she recognises her own voice again for the first time in this very peculiar day.
Silver raises his eyebrows and she thinks that he actually looks offended. “I would have thought -”
“This,” she says, and tugs at the dark tie.
He smiles, and carefully removes the article from her hold, though he lets his hand rest on hers. “Yes. But still -”
“You’re going to vanish any moment,” she explains, lying back down. “I know that. So you can’t be real, can you?”
He pauses, and then kisses her hand before releasing it. “Well, it would be rather awkward if I was here in the morning, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” she agrees, since there is no gain in lying. She knows she’s going to sleep and she’s sure this will all be a dream of some kind when she wakes again. She doesn’t mind that, not truly - it was in part the idea - but she fears that it will rapidly fade forever from her mind, the way a dream does. She’s only surprised he’s still here. “It would be terribly scandalous - and very inconvenient.”
Silver laughs. Then he catches her off-guard again, answering the question she didn’t ask. “I don’t seem to be needed.” He doesn’t add ‘luckily for you’; he doesn’t have to.
“What was in the other room?” she asks. “This is where I live; I should know.”
“You don’t want to.”
She opens her mouth to object: after all, knowing cannot be worse than sitting in the dark and wondering.
“I would have to show you,” says Silver. “And that… I think you don’t need any more nightmares.”
She looks away, irrationally ashamed that her private troubles are so obvious. She thinks instead to ask something she failed to before: “Did it hurt you?”
“No,” he says. “No. And,” he adds, as if in payment for her concern, “it’s not reading your thoughts, not exactly. But - like this - it’s rather difficult not to pick up some things.”
She bites her lip, and wonders about asking more. She knows her reasons for doing this; she’s not at all sure of his. It’s not in any way a solution of course, only the most temporary escape. She looks up as she thinks it and sees his reaction - he did hear that - and for a moment they are in complete accord. It is no doubt not all of the answer, but it is in part and that will suffice.
“You’re very…” he hesitates and then laughs at her again, kisses her once more. “Very sweet.”
And that’s all perfectly nice, but it’s also a closing down of the conversation; the last thing she remembers before she finally falls asleep.
When she wakes again it’s fully morning. The sun is trying to break in through the heavy curtains, enough for her to see that her room looks exactly as it should. She sits up. There aren’t any empty jewellery cases out on the dressing table, and her gown isn’t lying somewhere on the floor. The house feels… She draws in a breath because the change isn’t something she can explain in words, but there’s more sound and life surrounding her - a shadow has gone.
And then Mary arrives, with morning tea and inconsequential discussion about the bright weather, and which clothes she should wear today. She doesn’t seem to have any idea that yesterday was anything other out of the usual, and there are no remarks about unwonted carelessness to dresses.
Yesterday, it seems, was like any other day in this house. She’s the only one who knows otherwise.
***
Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there: