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--- resources:fic:a_man_talking_sense_to_himself [2016/05/17 12:38]
thomasl
+++ resources:fic:a_man_talking_sense_to_himself [2016/06/12 18:25] (current)
emmab
@@ Line 140: / Line 140: @@
 "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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