their wills were ever-bent on waiting [closed]

[goodweather]

Who: Phil and select folks
When: November plots
Where: Various
Summary: A place for me to collect closed threads with people I've been needing to hit. I need to control my thread count so so badly, so no open this month. Message me if you want to plot!
Warnings: None for now





(( hi :) i wasn't sure what to put here but it felt weird leaving it empty ))

Comments

[goodweather]

There's a soft chuckle there. "Oh, God, I could wonder the same of my wife." She already knows of a few impossible things that's happened to him, what's one more?

There's the shuffle of papers as he takes his sheets off of the piano stand, a soft clunk as he lowers it flat, a dull scrape as he pushes the bench back in. The soles of dress shoes gently hit the linoleum flooring as he steps off from the stage, and tap tap as he begins to circle around to where Helena is.

"By the way, I've been meaning to talk to you about something. It's... heavy and personal, but not time-sensitive. If now's not a good time then I can do this later, but I do want to talk."

[decrypter]

When he mentions his wife, there's a soft, slightly sorrowful look in her eyes, shifting to careful surprise when Phil brings up something personal, when she knows that there are potentially only a few subjects that would warrant that. Something about Darcy, maybe? Something she has to know?

"No, please, it's fine. I've got no other engagements today, and you needn't carry it longer than you already have."

[goodweather]

"Ah." Another light laugh. Yeah, that's the kind of attitude you meet Darcy with, isn't it. He's glad that she's good for them.

He says, as he pulls up a seat nearby, the soft breeze of snowmelt swirling around. "I made a friend named Grace," he begins. "She's been really sweet to me, but I know she's... also pretty good with that spear. And she's explained that she knew you before, and... where she was, before."

A beat. Maybe he should've gotten a drink.

"I know she's complicated, but she's... I mean, I've mentioned her to others, and it feels like I turned around and just about everyone that both you and I know dislikes--" hates, "--her in particular. I can't say I'm super fond of being in the position where I've met someone I like, and then everyone else I know doesn't but won't tell me why, but they pointed me in your direction."

[decrypter]

Ah. This kind of personal. There's a subtle but notable change that comes across the more he talks. A tension that rises in her, a straightening of her posture. Removing herself from the ease and comfort of just editing, and putting herself into the place of someone who needs to protect herself, shutting the notebook before her.

"...If she's talked to you about where we were before, then she may have explained that she was compelled to be a hunter. And everything that such entails."

Why, why, why is it that when she finally thinks she has escaped being accosted about Grace, someone else appears to demand answers? A deep breath, before she carries on. She'd mentioned a touch of it after that room, that timeless place of suffering, in the broadest strokes. If Phil knows, it will make it easier to elaborate.

"I, Mr. Connors, was compelled to be hunted. Tracked down and murdered, more times than I can fathom. Grace was one of my adversaries, many times over."

One of her murderers. Immortal, untouchable, always bloodthirsty. That may illuminate things for Phil now. The hatred, the distance made. The redirection to Helena, with something that personal.

"You can imagine that it makes our history rather...fraught. When she arrived, I asked all of those I was close to that they treat her with civility, and if such was impossible, to give her distance. So that this place would allow her the second chance and freedom that it offers so many others." Her hands, folded on her lap, are perfectly still. "I am glad that she can count you among her friends, that she has friends. Such were difficult to come by in a place that was..."

Hell.

"Unkind."

[goodweather]

The wind slows, goes colder, but does not still.

"I see." That about clears it all up in one. He'll ask for nothing else.

(Isn't that just another thing. Everyone he'll ever know is in some kind of pain, and everyone here is, just, always saturated in hellish amounts of it. An especially exhausted and derisive voice in him wonders absently if being murdered a bunch was ever something she and Darcy connected about.)

"I'm sorry." Just in general. For what happened, for this, what he's doing right now. "You are... very, very patient."

[decrypter]

"That's a specific way to describe it. I've always thought of it as that there is a difference between choosing such actions, and being bound as much as myself."

And it was being bound. She has no doubt that Grace explained that much.

"It was...frightening, at first, I won't lie, to know she was here. But we've managed to talk in ways that we couldn't before. She knows the weight of what happened. And...I would call her my friend now, now that we understand each other."

[goodweather]

"Sure there is. That doesn't make what I said less true."

Of course she explained. And how could he forget? Penalties. If her "voice" wasn't so strange, Grace wouldn't have cut through the haze of his head like she did, and he would have been speared at the bottom of that ship. Might not have even remembered how he died. Mercy, but not one he would have wanted.

Not like he isn't familiar with compelled murder, anyway.

And that patience isn't just in regards to Grace. It's for him, too. Everything.

"... Oh?" See, this is what he means. "Oh, I'm... glad. That's much better than most would have ended up with. She's not giving you too much trouble, is she?"

[decrypter]

"No, no - we've managed to discuss and go over a great deal, and we understand that some things are more difficult than others to navigate, but she isn't giving me trouble." A tiny pause, as she calculates the right words to use in this situation. "It is strange, though, when people come to ask me about her. As if I had the monopoly on her behavior, or something - I hardly wish to abandon her to fend for herself, but I don't want to rob her of the chance to form her own connections."

She isn't her keeper. But she also believes that if Grace earns enemies, it should be on her actions here, not there.