The Games we Play

[Kestrel]

Their world, or at least as far as it related to one another, was unraveling and The Lady merely looked indifferent. If he knew her at all, which he probably did at least in some aspects, he could safely assume that was an act. For all the airs she liked to put on, Egris was far more sensitive than she liked to portray. Under that chilled exterior, her smoldering anger seemed mingled with grief. Endings were difficult, even if it was best for all involved. It was time to move on.

She considered it a small victory that he had been the one to conclude their epilogue.

He chose the moment where her hand was warm on his cheek to squabble over semantics. Instead of inciting her temper, she merely winked in response. "Toy implies a plaything," she argued, as affectionately as if it were the sweetest of nothings. "No argument here," scoffed in reply to his insistence that words mattered.

He met her gaze until it was vaguely uncomfortable. Enough that she left him to gulp down half of her wine in effort to move this interaction along. She patted her jacket and pulled free their contract, sealed with her signet and their signatures in ink, to lay it upon the table among the uneaten meal. Eyes roamed across its surface. It had been meant as their first and last together; it grew cold instead. In this moment, it was clear they had failed one another time and again. And with such good intentions.

Long strides and clipped footfalls led her towards the fire in the hearth and she tossed the letter into the flames.

Her eyes remained upon the burning seal, wax melting into a puddle, as he spoke nonsense at her back. The flames crackling were its funeral dirge.

[Glenn]

Burnie stared. He stared at her. He stared at the fire. He stared at the crumbling paper and the wholly artificial promise that was crumbling to ash along with it. Were this some story, he might rush forth and save the paper. That wasn't this. That was never this.

His own words had become more and more abstract at the end there. He increasingly fell to metaphor these days. She wasn't the only one to complain about it, though no one else destroyed a marriage contract over it. Still, her action silenced him (which might be worth the destruction of such a document; silence, when it came to Burnie, could be invaluable).

Oh, it was a good twenty seconds before his eyes tore from the hearth and fell wholly upon her once more. His tone was not accusatory but it was not sympathetic either. "You do us a disservice, Egris, and I'm sick of it." He shifted, ever so slightly, so that he was between her and the door. She could storm out but she'd have to make it through him. He did know her, in at least some aspects. "Sometimes, when you play at a ruse long enough, you forget yourself. You forget that it was ever a ruse or that the reasons behind it were more important than the act itself. I was grasping to keep some semblance of political relevance. You were making a tangible move to grab more of a foothold in Myrken. This was a means to an end."

There was fire, yes, and he was playing with it. "We entered into an accord to counter Surdemer, to do our best by Myrken, to stymie whatever plans the court had for you. That was the partnership we had, the scheming we did. We were equals not in romance but in machinations. Let's embrace that, Egris. Let's celebrate that. Whatever we make next, let is be of our own terms."

[Kestrel]

They both watched, almost breathless, as the document caught and held the flame. The parchment burned with a vaguely acrid smell which mingled with the soft, cloying sweetness of the scented wax utilized for the seal. The flames warmed her cheeks and suffused them with faint color as they reflected within her gaze. She felt the weight of his gaze upon the plane of her back eventually, the muscles corded taut and threatening to make her neck ache later. Nimbly, she stooped and balanced upon the balls of her feet to peer at the hearth. She reached blindly, her fingers catching and grasping the fire iron, and she nudged the logs to disturb the ash that was their accord. It would surprise no one that The Kestrel was one prone to pick at fresh wounds. This one smarted more than most, she was surprised to find.

The iron was replaced and she stood, shoulders back and chin lifted slightly to face him as he strode across the room to stand guard before the door to block her exit. The mirth settled upon her features seemed to be leveled upon the thought that he could keep her somewhere she declined to remain. She wagered it harmed nothing to play along for now, at least. Her arms crossed her chest and she stared boldly down her nose at Glenn Burnie. His words sounded angry and almost desperate to her ears, though she could be wrong. She'd been wrong about so many things; especially about him.

"Do I? A disserve, you say?," she questioned, voice low and drawled out lazily, feeling finally as if she held the upper hand in this situation. It had steeled her resolve and soothed her restless soul. She had been set to walk away, to never look back, and it bothered him. Point for her.

"I agree. Our relationship was a means to an end. Our partnership was mutually beneficial. Again, I beseech you? What use have I to you now? Myrken and Surdemer are distant thoughts these days. I will look back at our time fondly. I will remember who you used to be." She hesitated as he drew his conclusions; her chilled stare shifting into something and averting to consider his words. Grudgingly, she again met his gaze. This time, she seemed annoyed and a hand fell to her hip.

"What do you want, Burnie?," she asked with exasperation.

He'd won her ear again. Best not squander that chance.

[Glenn]

Certain things were acceptable once and only once. A few minutes before, he had turned the question back upon her. In that moment, he'd been right to do so. She was the one who started the letters back up. She had been the one to surprise him here. For her to ask him what he wanted, no, to demand such an answer, without first answering it herself? It was unfair at best and cowardly at worst and likely somewhere in the middle.

That was then, before the destruction of the contract, before they went around in yet one more circle. Things were different now. He could have simply let her leave. Yes, she would have had the freedom to come back at some later point, but her pride would have never allowed it. He gave up quite a bit by pressing the matter. Perhaps that was something she did not understand, though; he had so little left to lose.

Despite that fact, he was still not the Burnie of six months before. That Burnie would have offered her something else entirely, some level of service, of purpose. He had been made too aware of that particular gape to seek it out so haphazardly. That was, on one level, a shame, since they both would have enjoyed such an arrangement and the rewards that might be reaped therein.

It was too late for that too, though, which meant that all that remained was honesty. When he looked at her again, it was more invasive than before, as if he was contemplating all options. "I've found that the easy options in life are often without lasting substance. You've done us a disservice. I refuse to do the same." Then, with just a hint of amusement as he took a step towards her. "I appreciate that. You remember fondly a desperate man who had so recently lost half of everything and was on the verge of losing everything else, so much of that due to his own action and inaction. Desperation begets energy, motion, momentum. A chaotic wildness? No matter. Had you come a year earlier, you would have encountered a different beast entirely, less human, more ruthless, just as dedicated. A year before would have provided you an outright monster. A year before that, an overenthusiastic wretch drowning in healing tinctures and physical exertion.

"Which leads us to now. I think I am here for some of the same reasons you are away. My responsibility is elsewhere." What is he to do here? Lie to her in order to buy one more letter, one more visit? He's well past the point of lying to himself. "Ultimately, I want what I lost, some of which is no longer for the having. I want to do well for the place and the people I care about. For our people in general in the face of a world where we are naught but repressed victims to magic and monsters and death. I want to break the cycles and break the chains. I can't but want anything else. I am here because I worry about the blood I would spill in the process, because I do not trust myself to complete such a task without destroying the very things I fight for. What, Egris, in all this world, can you provide to me to better ensure I do not falter from my path?"

[Kestrel]

They dueled. They danced. Both of those together and neither.

One two three. Turn two three. Strike, parry. One leading and then the other.

Both knew it was probably the best option to end this back and forth, to bow and wander off to their respective corners. They could move on with their lives instead of clinging to the past. Still, they lingered; unable to release the other. The reason was unknown, unrealized to the both of them. Nostalgia was a truly powerful force. Or perhaps it was just better with the devil one knew. Perhaps they were both so lonely, they could not afford to say goodbye to yet another person who drew affection and ire all at once.

They were either good for one another or terrible for one another and neither of them seemed to know the difference.

So when she threatened to abandon him to his isolated fate, it took near nothing at all to turn her crimson head again.

Perhaps she had just wanted to call his bluff. Perhaps he and his infuriating company meant more to her than she was willing to admit.

His single step in her direction was noted with a wary stare, a wild thing caught in the trappings of domestication. Her wildness was more disciplined than his former chaos. Was it wary? In the faint light, it looked for a moment to be more like anticipation.

"Honestly, I liked the desperation. It mirrored my own," she admitted, which didn't happen often enough with her. She rarely let her guard down around anyone; not without force. Usually, he was the one forcing her to reveal a little of her hand, but never more than just a glimpse of a few cards. When he spoke about what he wanted so honestly, it was enough to still her tongue and to open her ears. He captured her attention like a child captures a firefly in the dark of night. He held her there, waiting until he asked that simple, completely complicated question.

"I have little idea, Glenn. What could I provide to you? And why would I want to?," she asked, a single elegant brow lofting high in her struggle to hide her soft amusement.

[Glenn]

What life did he have? He had the absence of life, the recovery from life, the eventual promise of a life renewed. One would think, therefore, that she would have the moral high ground. But then, what life did she have? A life decided from birth? A life escaping from expectations? She had trained a gilded cage for an iron one, and while it was a cage that she did so love to rattle, it was a cage nonetheless.

They had both been desperate, he for a way to hold on to his crumbling life's work and she for the autonomy to decide on what her own work might be. His life HAD been the work and that was years gone now. Her gambit had failed, not that she'd likely admit it, and the circle had continued to spiral on.

He'd shown a sign of weakness now, of vulnerability, and her response was a brow aloft. Enjoyment. Burnie was no fool, arrogant but not so arrogant, not after life and his own actions had brought him down so low. He had good sense for what was before him and why. "Shall we do this forever? Answer every question with a question in return? Is it truly that we do not know ourselves? Or that we do not know one another? Or that we would not admit what we know to ourselves? Or that we would not show it to one another?" He had answered one question with six. At some point aggravating her was the only logical path forward.

There needed to be more, though. He knew it. She knew it. "Purpose. You could provide purpose, but then yours is not mine. Promise, then? A promise and a threat. That you'll return to Myrken in a year's time. A year from the day that this last accord was burned. If I am not ready to go back with you, then you'll have your way with the place. If I am, we'll temper our vision together for the good of its people?"

[Kestrel]

Had he voiced his thoughts, she'd speak at length about everyone living in a cage; of other's expectations, of birth, of wealth or its lack thereof. They were just two pieces in a very large puzzle and neither of them were anything special. But he didn't comment and she couldn't reply. Instead, her eyes traced over his features with wary expectation. One never knew what to anticipate from Glenn Burnie.

One of the personality quirks she both liked and loathed.

His question about their game made one shoulder lift just barely. He had a magnificent way of cutting through the bullshit to the very core of the matter; the heart and soul of it. She would allow it, given that she was road-weary and wanted nothing more than to find her bed and pillow and the solace in that since there would be none found here. In him. She'd been wistful thinking otherwise. Childish notions. "Perhaps, though it seems a tedious affair to continue indefinitely. You haven't the stamina and I haven't the attention span, let us be completely honest." She meant it as an insult to them both, though its cut was shallow at best.

The corner of her mouth twitched in reply to his multitude of questions. "Now, that is hardly fair. Now I've the task of composing six entire questions in which to answer yours." A hand found her hip. "I've just told you about my attention span." His astute observation seemed to have softened her around the edges, given that she was meeting his attempt at irritation with some manner of banter instead of her usual exasperation.

"I think perhaps that we are too used to interactions that seek to win, to reveal too much of ourselves," she neatly shattered their competition by answering one of his many questions. She wasn't entirely certain if that meant she was the victor or its opposite. She stood with her palms resting on the back of the chair she'd previously vacated, gazing down at their forgotten meal, barely eaten.

He spoke, he gave her his final accord and her eyes lifted to press softly against the planes of his face. Her smile was sad. "I can promise you nothing more than maybe," she answered, more solemn than he'd ever had chance to hear her before. "Myrken might be your life's work, but it was never meant to be mine. I know that now. Besides, you can not offer something you don't own, especially if I have no interest in taking it. If I have nothing else to do in a year's time and I haven't forgotten completely about this silly little bargain, I may see to your safe travel back to its sleepy inn and terrible, wonderful denizens. And if I've a mind to, I may very well act as an ally to you there and to the crown in this far-off fantasy of yours." A year's time was long; her work was dangerous. Another shrug and she pushed away from the chair. She took hold of her jacket and replaced it as well as the various pieces of armor upon her frame.

Once she was done, The Lady climbed to her feet and crossed the room towards him. Her palm again attempted to alight shyly upon his cheek, because she'd never been comfortable touching him. Her forehead leaned in very close to his own should she manage as much. "But only as a favor to you. And more likely, I will leave this place and we will both forget the other except in idle moments or dying breaths. I wish you well, my old friend. And I use that word with every bit as much confusion as you have brought to my life."

She'd seek to clap him once upon the shoulder, wink, and turn back towards the door while patting her frame to make certain she hadn't forgotten anything.

This was, it seemed, her version of a goodbye.