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--- resources:fic:a_man_talking_sense_to_himself [2016/05/15 08:38]
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+++ resources:fic:a_man_talking_sense_to_himself [2016/06/12 18:25]
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 "For pity's sake, Armand," she says, her face despairing, "I'm not //trying// to manipulate you.  I'm trying to get you to open up -- and without the help of a knife this time."
-"Well what could you possible hope to hear from me?" he demands - standing, rounding on her. "How I was in love with you, but now I'm not? How I used to think we could help each other, learn from each other - but now I don't? How I was an idiot to think any kind of apology could make amends for what I did when we were idiotic kids - not when you could use it as a tool to bludgeon me with when practical? Enlighten me, Penelope. What would be the point of any of those things?"
+"Well what could you possible hope to hear from me?" he demands - standing, rounding on her. "How I was in love with you, but now I'm not? How I used to think we could help each other, learn from each other - but now I don't? How I was an idiot to think any kind of apology could make amends for what I did when we were stupid kids - not when you could use it as a tool to bludgeon me with when practical? Enlighten me, Penelope. What would be the point of any of those things?"
+Penelope stands tall, despite the tirade and grins childishly, "Haaa, you said you were in love with me."
+Armand gives her a level look. "//Seriously//?"
+"See, you're opening up already!"
+"Shut up. My point was, all of that stuff is totally irrelevant."
+"So go on then, what //is// relevant?"
+Armand gives what is not so much an eyeroll as it is a full-bodied exercise in extreme derision. "How the fuck am I meant to judge what'll interest you? All that stuff, you knew already. I can only assume."
+"It's irrelevant if it will only interest me.  Go on, you've got me here, what's of interest to you?  What do you want to say?"
+//Don't patronise me//. Is what he's meant to say. Is what he tries to say, in fact - but all of a sudden, halfway through, it's too much: she's dead, and it's too much, and before he can speak, the tears are hot against his lashes, and nothing in the world could make him blink them away, acknowledge this idiocy -
+"Don't - //damn// it..."
+Her brow furrows into a frown, "Hey, come on, don't... oh Armand, come on..."
+"//What//?" Audible sniff. "I'm not. I'm not doing anything."
+"Of course you're not," she says, hopping off the desk and sitting down on a chair, "but since you might not get a chance to continue to not do anything again any time soon... that's okay."
+"That's okay?" he repeats, derisively, swiping his sleeve over his eyes - and okay, fuck, she definitely saw //that//. "I don't need you to tell me what's okay! Gods - it's like I'm more cut up about this than you are. You don't have to worry about anything anymore. You just get to sit there, smug in your martyrdom."
+"I think if anyone here's cut up about this-" she starts to say, but pauses and stops.  "Trust me," she says, "'smug' is not the right word for endless torture: so at least do me a favour and stop torturing yourself."
+"Oh, like you care whether I do or not!" The tears are threatening to spill over, and it's everything he swore he'd never become - depths to which he promised himself he'd never sink. "I'd have thought you'd rather relish it, all things considered."
+"I thought we discussed that."
+"In general, sure. But don't tell me you ever cared about what happened to me."
+"Well, no, not until the end.  Not that we knew it was going to be the end, mind, but the end nevertheless," she says, biting her lip slightly as she does.  "And you're doing it again, Armand: dancing round the issue with your clever words, quietly avoiding answering what you need to answer yourself: what do you want to say?  One shot, one chance, and let's be honest we both know this is for you far more than it is for me."
+Armand straightens. He's painfully tense, he realises - nails biting into the flesh of his palms. "You're right. It is. And so, frankly, there's nothing to say." He's looking at her now - actually seeing her. Unflinching. Calm. "I said everything I needed to back by your coffin." Assuming this vision - this spectre - is even aware of that. "'Thank you' would be insincere. 'I love you'... you'd take it the wrong way. And that's the sort of thing you only say once."
+Penelope looked at him, her eyes, still red from the blood mannequin she once was, looking into his eyes, boring into his soul, and then she smiled: "You really really aren't that arse of a cousin I used to know."
+Armand isn't sure whether to take offence at this, or to laugh. He ends up doing an awkward sort of sputter: indignant, yet undignified.
+"The city tends to do that to you," he says, cautiously. "Political marriage too, oddly. If it doesn't send you the other way instead."
 {{tag>"a man talking sense to himself" fic}}

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