(no subject)
Sep. 29th, 2008 01:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
[Immediately after this:]
Duo is hurrying down the hallway towards room 121, pulling River along with him with one hand closed gently around her arm. She's starting to stumble a little, but keeping pace. He gets to watch where they're going for the both of them, though; her gaze darts around, never quite settling, and her jaw is clenched as tight as her shoulders and the tendons on the backs of her hands.
Her white face is tight with fury, but there are tears on her cheeks now.
Duo is hurrying down the hallway towards room 121, pulling River along with him with one hand closed gently around her arm. She's starting to stumble a little, but keeping pace. He gets to watch where they're going for the both of them, though; her gaze darts around, never quite settling, and her jaw is clenched as tight as her shoulders and the tendons on the backs of her hands.
Her white face is tight with fury, but there are tears on her cheeks now.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-29 05:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-29 05:28 am (UTC)Her head snaps sideways; her eyes, tear-bright and full of furious intensity still, fix on Duo.
"He's wrong. Breaks the bounds, doesn't fit."
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Date: 2008-09-29 05:45 am (UTC)He herds her toward the bed and hovers nearby.
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Date: 2008-09-29 05:51 am (UTC)River lets herself be herded. When she drops onto the bed it's in one abrupt motion, as if gravity suddenly took over; she turns her head to stare at (or through) the wall, face tight and tears still slowly leaking.
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Date: 2008-09-29 06:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-29 06:25 am (UTC)"Stand true."
"Who we are. He breaks the world, all the straws in the quantum underpinning, but, but he won't. He won't."
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Date: 2008-09-29 06:38 am (UTC)"We're okay. Quantums and all. 'Least, I am. You're gonna have to tell me if you are." Duo quits twitching uselessly and sits down next to her.
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Date: 2008-09-29 07:18 am (UTC)(But you have scarred me with your knives and burned me with your fires borne of your false magic)
And then -- she's still silent, but her head moves a little in an unclear and fretful gesture, and then her shoulders slump as if all the fight's gone out of her between one breath and the next. Her eyes close, and open again to stare unseeing at the blanket.
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Date: 2008-09-30 03:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-30 03:51 am (UTC)"He's wrong," she mutters.
"Hurts the air. And, and I can hear it."
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Date: 2008-09-30 04:01 am (UTC)"Feel free not to answer, but this is your other thing, isn't it?"
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Date: 2008-09-30 04:10 am (UTC)Her head moves slightly in an equivocal gesture: maybe affirmation, or maybe a question, or maybe something between the two.
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Date: 2008-09-30 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-30 04:29 am (UTC)And then: "It's very noisy." There's a ghost of a smile with that, but the humor is bleak; if this sounds like an admission of sorts, that's because it is.
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Date: 2008-09-30 04:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-30 04:41 am (UTC)She's had five free years to get used to it; eight years, since the first treatments began.
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Date: 2008-10-01 03:03 am (UTC)Pause.
"...when I'm not talking, anyway?" Should he leave her alone?
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Date: 2008-10-01 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 04:00 am (UTC)Then she shakes her head, a little -- the motion small, but faintly frustrated. "Not the point. It's qualitative."
"You're okay."
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Date: 2008-10-01 04:27 am (UTC)"You wanna stay up here for a while, then?"
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Date: 2008-10-01 04:47 am (UTC)And nods, just a little.
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Date: 2008-10-01 04:55 am (UTC)He digs around on the shelf under the bedside table for a moment before coming up with a sharpie and a pad of paper. "Why don't you show me what you were working on before we got interrupted?"
Distraction is a go.
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Date: 2008-10-01 05:17 am (UTC)Or the sharpie, for that matter.
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Date: 2008-10-01 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 05:25 am (UTC)But, hey, she's looking at him instead of the middle distance!
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Date: 2008-10-01 05:27 am (UTC)"Yeeees?" He waggles the marker at her.
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Date: 2008-10-01 05:31 am (UTC)If he does, he has bigger problems than needing to follow River's notes. (Especially since half of them are in chalk on the bar floor, unless they're already getting cleaned up by sleep-deprived Oompa Loompas.)
That's not precisely a refusal, though.
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Date: 2008-10-01 05:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 05:56 am (UTC)But she also reaches for the pen, reluctantly.
"Your subtlety is flawed," she informs him.
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Date: 2008-10-01 06:05 am (UTC)This will keep them busy for a while. He'll sneak back down and see if the bar has emptied out any later.