CLOSED | prompt eight | RUIN

[dondarrion]

prompt eight | R U I N dressing-room style. closed to rog.

 

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[mocked]

[ He raises one eyebrow, and then the other. (Two can play at that game.) In response: ] Pessimist.

[blitzes]

[ He falls back a few steps with a slight oof, though in an instant he's reclaimed that ground. ]

Fuckin' invincible, aren't you?

[ An endearment more than a dare or a come-on, though it comes off as the latter. ]

[unravelled]

[ Barrymore's voice comes through at length. ]

I'm— I'm good, Kirn. Promise. You can just— y-you can go away now.

[ Liar, liar, pants on fire. (She only says she's good when she's at her worst. When she doesn't even have it in herself to accept his help. ] —I-I've got it covered.

[oppose]

[ Truth be told, Esther is the first of his minders that he's ever bothered detailing any of this to. It's partly because she's never asked, because they know without saying and because despite the fact that he's the so-called paragon of evil, there's never been a lie passed between the two of them. ]

It helps for a little, when you get down to the nitty-gritty, but when you're falling through space it doesn't much matter if someone's holding your hand or not. It's not really going to change a thing, you know?

[ (It's ironic, maybe, that it's times like these that he seems the most human — the most diminished, the most small. Not the devil and not the son of God but just him. Maybe it's a crime that, in the end, God's most beloved creations were so close to what he had had before.) ]

[carpool]

[ Nobody knows how Mr. Marling makes his living but his daughter Baby Jane — clever, curious, quiet Baby Jane — has a suspicion. She's never asked, though, and he never tells her — something of a modus operandi for the both of them. Turns out, with Baby Jane, the apple hasn't fallen very far from the tree.

What that means when Baby Jane grows up — not even her teachers (who send periodic notes home with her, voicing their concerns to her father) can tell.

Her expression is unsettlingly flat for a girl her age, her eyes uncharacteristically knowing. She watches her father's hands (he works with them, somehow) but keeps her own to herself. (A different sort of daughter might have reached for him.) ]

You wouldn't, though. Ever. Not even in a story.

[pseudoarchaeology]

[ He resists at first (habit, not conscious thought); he resists because it's engrained in him by now (too many times having been thrown out of conference rooms, out of restaurants and out of parties thrown by people who used to be his friends). Gene tugs his sleeve away, tries to throw the arm from off of his shoulders, but then, there's his name, spoken in an infinitely patient voice.

Confusion sets into his features as he looks at Nellie. It takes him a moment to remember. ] I didn't, Nellie. You'll tell them. Won't you?

[marling]

[ He shrugs. (Just the one shoulder.) ]

Never gave it back t' me.

[ A joke, at his own expense. Once never-trodden ground, now a rare indulgence. (A for you, his version of a Hallmark card.) ]

[peek]

[ He tries not to laugh at her if he can help it. Laugh at other people and how stupid they can be; laugh at the situation, laugh at himself. But Grace — even though she's a head and a half smarter than everyone else he knows — Grace is still a child with child body and child heart. Peek understands (in a conceptual way, at least) how those sorts of things are still soft and malleable, how they bruise easily if you don't handle them properly. How easily they can break.

(The last time he hurt her feelings, he'd felt guilty for a week and had given her extra ice cream at breakfast, lunch and dinner in an attempt to say sorry.)

He smiles to himself and looks away. (Her hair's come undone and the urge is to fix it.)

With a feigned sort of innocence: ] Oh. Was he Irish?

[pictured]

[ Stella's expression seems to collapse at the very thought, mouth pulling into a frown as her brow pinches. She shakes her head fervently, the curls of her hair waving about her face as she does. ]

Oh, terribly, terribly. You know I would.

[ By contrast, there isn't a sibling among them that Stella doesn't care for to at least some perfunctory degree. If she's told to scram, then she will, though the bones, if there are any, always find their way back to the house one way or another. (She has a gentle heart — a fault, in a brood like theirs.) ]

[wont]

[ A shiver takes her, unkind and sudden, and although a new sheen colors her complexion Alayne smiles at Petyr and reaches for his hand, the gesture meant to give comfort and take comfort as well. As great a toil as her condition has been upon her body, her heart has suffered even more — threatening to break beneath the greatest sorrows and the greatest joys. What have you done, had been the question hung upon everyone's lips at the news. And though there were many who would have seen Petyr hung that day — strung up by his own entrails in the name of some greater justice — Alayne had thrown herself bodily upon him and cried, these crimes are shared between us as is the blame; bury me with him, if you are so keen for his hide.

(Cords were cut then, names burned from hearts and memory. Your blood will never mingle with a Stark's, Baelish, had come the decree and how Alayne had wept.)

Her fingers tremble upon his. Her belly aches. ]

Still you look to win me with songs, when I am won already.

[breadth]

[ Just as he keeps his distance from her paper menagerie, so does Sylvia's gaze avoid Isak's scarred and milky eye. It is easier to pretend that way, easier to imagine no wrongs had ever come between them — for even though he has a face much like a villains, for all that his voice is never soft nor gentle, she understands that some stories are not written.

(No one will write of them when they are both gone, but that does not mean theirs must be an unhappy tale.)

Isak apologizes but Sylvia does not seem terribly bothered. She whispers something to the dragonfly and it flaps its wings with a papery whisper. ]

I reminded myself of it. [ A pause then she thinks to ask: ] Do you dislike horrible endings, Isak?

[folded]

[ Her expression, wholly alien, does nothing for a moment. Then her eyebrows follow in almost child-like mimicry. One and then the other. ] Realist.

[biter]

[ How does that old playground saying go? (Polly doesn't know cause the Academy took them from her, those little girl, playground days.) I am rubber, you are glue. Truer words have never been spoken about Barry Weiss, she thinks.

She flashes him the finger, bares her teeth and growls. ]

Better'n you, flash.

[missus]

[ She reaches out to touch that shoulder, follow the line of it with her fingers. Before she became Marling (before she settled down, or her version of it), she never knew what it truly meant to touch something. Just reach out and touch it, that's it. Used to be a grab, a shove, a squeeze, a bite — never light, never just because she could. (She's already got him, she doesn't need to claim him again.)

Her eyes sparkle for him. You sad, lovely sack. ] Yeah? An' you give th'doss cunt what she 'ad comin' to her? Y'set her right?

[dysmorphia]

I know you would, [ she affirms, her tone overly sweet like the way a person might coo at a pet dog. Just because Ruby knows doesn't mean it doesn't feel wonderful when her sister reminds her. (She could be sweeter if she wanted to, could give the illusion of something more resembling genuine care but when it comes to her siblings, Ruby is selfish. She knows she isn't the only one guilty of such a crime.) ]

I would miss you too, as much as bones could miss anything. That's why you must never go away. [ (I need you, but not in a loving way. In a needy way, like a parasite.) ]

SANSA | surrogates

[deposit]

[ It's not an idea that Sansa readily understands, if only because she's had very little in her life. A symptom of a brief existence spent upon the Estate, there is nothing she's owned that was not a trinket or a bauble or a book (she has no concept of true ownership, like responsibility, like love; the headmaster claims it is better that way).

Frowning, she rereads the sentence before turning the page. (The book itself is a gift, one of many given to her by Mr. Baelish since coming to live in the attic.) Sansa murmurs to herself as her blue eyes skim the page and settles herself more fully into the high wingbacked chair in which she sits. ] How very strange.

[erotomaniac]

[ She's right, to that extent. No wife, no kids, no girlfriend. (It's hard to keep up a relationship if your heart's not in it. Harder still if it's a girl you haven't spoken more than a few sentences to at a time that fills up your mind's eye. And hardest of all if every move she makes seems to say I love you, take me away from here. He keeps the receipts she tears for him and pores over each torn corner, mind dreaming up signal after signal from the basis of nothing at all. She fantasizes about the lives of her customers and he fantasizes about her. It makes him sick to his stomach but it has to be love if it burns like this.)

She smiles and he manages a tentative one in return, shaking his head slightly as he pulls his wallet from his pocket.

(You're pretty when you smile, d'you know t'at?) ]

Get distracted too easy, me, [ he says, by way of an extended apology.

A beat, and then, cautiously: ] Y' ever get tired o' the routine?

[forsook]

[ Though in many cases Saul is essentially a brick wall, the glaring exception is in the matter of his sister. As if in example, instead of striking back, he rolls over onto his side, arms still raised over his head, now as though in surrender. ]

What kind of fun is there in that?

[ Half bleary, he sits up, casting about for her again. ]

And what're you still cleaning, anyway?

[preoccupation]

[ Not a lot of people pay attention to her and she doesn't blame them. Waverly's not like a shopgirl, isn't paid to be pretty or smell nice or wear the company perfume for minmum wage plus commission. She's just a set of hands, a smile with no lipgloss, a hello of paper or plastic and a goodbye of come again. She wears the same ugly green smock as all the rest of the employees here, a nametag pinned to the left strap and her hair pulled back in a low ponytail that unworks itself slowly during her shift.

Sometimes, if she's lucky, a cute boy will smile at her, a little kid at the front of his mother's cart will babble nonsense at her and wave his toy in her direction. (Dylan works three aisles over and sometimes he pays attention to her, but it's never anything more than hey, Waverly and later.)

She can't recall if this is the first time Mr. Quinn's tried to start conversation with her but, at the end of the day it's neither here nor there. Her smile is awkward but genuine. The bar of her retainer shows over her teeth as she shrugs bashfully. ]

I mean— a job's a job, right? It was either this or flip burgers, and— [ Waverly laughs and bites the bottom of her lip to stop the sound, her gaze darting from side to side to make sure the floor manager isn't in sight. Luckily for both of them the dinner crowd's come and gone so there's little to nobody looking for check-out. The bridge of her nose crinkles. ] —I mean. I hope you don't flip burgers for a living. It'd be cool if you did, though.

[ [ (I hate it here. Everything's so boring and dull. I'm just waiting, waiting, for you to come whisk me away. She bites her lip, she blushes, she laughs. Do not wanna? What's the wait?) ]

[complicit]

[ Her voice comes from down a sidehall, muffled by the linen closet door. There's a lace runner in her hands when she shuts it again — a pointless confection in terms of decor but Ruth can afford good things for herself. (What Saul lacks, she has, and where Saul has compulsion, she has temperance.) ]

Oh? Asking me about fun, are you? [ She gives the runner a flap, trying to air out the dust and creases. ] I'm just cleaning to pass the time. Really, Sally.

[ Her heels click in sharp, even rhthym as she returns to lift a nearby lamp and spread the doily out beneath it. ] And, since you're never going to bring it up yourself, no, you don't like you're having fun at all.

[eyed]

[ He turns from his place, though he doesn't move any further into the room. The collar isn't something he considers strictly necessary, but it's a nice touch, in a perverse, grandiose sort of way. ]

Nobody in the Keep would disagree, [ he says mildly, leaning back against the wall. ] You know how loathe we all are to slight the Light of the West.

[leer]

I guess. [ There's reluctance to the concession, but it's the fact that he concedes at all that proves significant. With a near childish kind of annoyance: ] Let's talk about something else, Cee. Anything else. Or not talk. Anything. [ It's an obtuse sort of way of getting out of the discussion, but he doesn't much have the stomach for it at the moment. (He never will, but that's neither here nor there considering how much — or little, relatively speaking — they have left to experience.) ]

[destrier]

[ Her shoulders roll in place of feathers (the warbird's true form is kept from her by ritual and magic, though her slender girl-fingers are tipped with nails sharp enough to flay a man apart). It is good that Lord Baelish keep his distance. Though he holds her favor, what he gives is not worship. Not yet, though she will know satisfaction with time.

She shifts again, the dagged sleeve of her robe hung downward like the droop of wet wings. ]

You give yourself to her like a beggar man, human lord. Tarry. Or your end will be just as low.

[grooms]

[ The Strangler doesn't actually know what it is to smile and it is that knowledge that keeps Gavin from rising to the bait. (It's that knowledge — along with the knowledge that the colony will die otherwise — that has kept him from killing her — it — for so long. Grief had twisted into anger but had been stifled in its sleep by duty.) ]

I know, and you know, too, where it'd lead. You know it's not a choice I can make.

[merely]

[ It's a little more straightfoward than simply changing the topic himself, even though it lacks just as much elegance. For all that Claret looks up to Titian, relying on him for both physical protection and the kind of possessiveness that comes part and parcel with the Duke name, there is still something overwhelmingly adolescent about him. (She blames Vermillion and father, she blames Cerise. Only that feeling of anger and resentment lasts only a moment, maybe two, before passing through her completely, leaving her to quiet resignation again.)

I wish you'd just talk to me. I wish you'd let me help. But that's wishful thinking and not in the cards. Claret knows that, she does, but sometimes she still hopes. ]

Fine, [ she says, a little disappointed, a little deflated. ] Just— whatever you'd like. [ She scoots forward a little, to the very edge of the couch — her version of being forward. (They don't have to talk at all, if he doesn't want. And Vermillion won't be back for another few hours.) ]