[oom] A Pot of Tea

[dejah_thoris]

This is the part of the project she enjoys the most.  The design phase, where ideas start to take form and the project takes on a certain life of its own.  She has compiled all the research she needs.  She's relatively certain she's aware of all the issues that must be addressed in the final design.  Now it's time to synthesize these ideas and put her pens to paper.  As form follows function, and evolution has handled refining the design, all she needs to do is adapt the technology to the original biological schematics.  Layers upon layers, she builds up the image, from structure to power, sensors to servos.  She can't help but put her own aesthetic into the work, and in sketching, she decides that she'll have to fabricate several of the parts by hand.

Woola found his way back and was snoozing in front of the fire.  She'd been up since the wee hours of the morning.  The rats had brought her morning meal without her even having to ask.  Now, she sat at her drawing board, her long hair pinned back from her face, speared through with a quill.  At her elbow, a growing stack of dirty tea cups that would have to be addressed sooner or later.

But not right now.  She wanted to get the last few pieces of the external forearm onto the vellum, just as she'd imagined it.

Comments

[2goodarms]

I might as well have.

I tried, once.

"We were over Yekaterina Bridge," he says, low. "That's how we used to mark the new year. One loop, starting and ending with the bridge."

He draws his thumb along the side of his mug, unconsciously tracing out the little wrenches and hammers, the tiny weapons printed over and over again.

"It got bad. There's a long tunnel after the bridge, they had night-vision goggles, we had nothing. At first. We managed to get some torches. That helped. We took down a bunch of the guards and managed to get a knife in Mason's leg."

(He forgets, as he's absorbed into the memory, that he's never mentioned Mason to Dejah before.)

"And I was going for her when Edgar started screaming."

[dejah_thoris]

She licks her lips, sets her mug down, folds her hands in her lap.

Still regarding him with that gaze.

She knows what it's like to make battlefield decisions, to send men to their deaths. She knows what it's like to see the funeral pyres.

[2goodarms]

"He was shouting for me by name."

All his attention's on the mug now.

"It wasn't just...screaming. He was calling for me to help. One of the guards had -- " Curtis mimes a blade, the side of his hand to his throat. "A knife on him. I saw it.

"And I turned my back on him and went for Mason instead."

[dejah_thoris]

Before he's even finished speaking, she's moving, shifting to sit beside him. Close enough to rest her hand on his arm.

"He chose to follow you into battle. He knew the consequences. You were their leader. You had a mission to complete. That mission was not to keep Edgar alive. He knew that."

[2goodarms]

"I know."

He draws a long breath. Stronger, "I know. But I was supposed to look out for him."

And maybe he wouldn't have followed Curtis into battle in the first place if he didn't fucking worship him so much.

[dejah_thoris]

Her words are stern, but not unkind. "You were supposed to look out for all of them. And you did."

Her hand lights on his chin and draws his gaze up. Her voice gentles.

"And you still lost. This is the way of war."

[2goodarms]

But nobody else died screaming for Curtis to save them. (Edgar, always trusting to the end that Curtis could do everything.)

This argument isn't a battle worth fighting, though. Especially when he knows she's right: war is as unjust as Wilford, and makes even less pretense of caring for those it carries. It's just...

It was Edgar.

"Least we took down the engine, too," he whispers.

[dejah_thoris]

"It was an honorable death."

Her thumb caresses his beard and he can see the pain and loss reflected in her gaze.

"And he's here now. Giving me hell in your defense." The corner of her mouth quirks up.

[2goodarms]

Without thinking, Curtis leans into her touch, taking a beat to rest against her hand -- and then he huffs out a breath of laughter.

"Almost like being home," he deadpans.

[dejah_thoris]

She feels it, and draws just a little closer. His cheek is warm against her palm.

"Curtis..."

[2goodarms]

I can't do this.

She's expecting what he can't give. She's looking at him and seeing ghosts of her husband. That isn't fair.

But god, on the scale of injustices Curtis has endured, this one is so small. And she's so warm, and so close, and goddammit, Wilford was right that it's been a long fucking time since he shared his bunk with anyone --

His heart races. Curtis shuts his eyes, reaches out, brushes his fingers against her knee.

[dejah_thoris]

He reaches for her for the first time, and she thinks she might dissolve into a ray of pure moonlight.  He closes his eyes and she does too, closing the distance just to rest her brow against his. Just to breathe his breath. To share space with him. When she speaks, her voice is barely more than a whisper, but no less empassioned for it.

"Stay with me for awhile. I just want you to have some place you feel safe."

[2goodarms]

His throat tightens.

"I don't feel safe anywhere," he confesses. "It's not because of you. It's just..."

Eighteen years.

[dejah_thoris]

"I know. I know. But you are safe here. I will stake my life on it."

Her hand continues stroking his cheek, slow, willing him to feel what she is trying to share with him.

"I know you are still fighting this war..."

[2goodarms]

Curtis nods, very carefully, so as not to lose contact with her hand.

Wilford's gone. The train's gone. There's no concrete enemy left, but he still wants to keep fighting, keep moving forward. He doesn't know how to stop -- or even if he should.

[dejah_thoris]

He stays, and she can feel herself girding against the moment when he flees. But he stands fast and she holds onto each moment like it's going to slip through her fingers.

"I know what it's like," she says, and maybe he can hear it in her voice. "They wrote themselves into our mythology. They told us they were messengers of the gods..."

Her voice is just above breaking.

[2goodarms]

Curtis opens his eyes. He doesn't draw back, but he shifts enough to give her his full attention, frowning.

Soft: "Who did?"

[dejah_thoris]

"The Thern. You would call them angels, but they were a force of pain and chaos and destruction. They whispered in the ears of powerful men and stoked the engines of our downfall. Ten thousand years of war. The last thousand between Helium and Zodanga. My home and our enemy."

She opens her eyes to tell him the abridged version.

"They tried to assassinate me for my work. I had deciphered their weapons, their technology. And I agreed to give my hand in marriage to the enemy, so they would spare Helium. Only the Thern planned to have me murdered on my wedding night. As a final humiliation to my people."

[2goodarms]

"Jesus," he breathes.

That's what the part of her letter met. His fingers shift from her knee, find her free hand, and curl tight.

[dejah_thoris]

She takes his hand, draws it to her own cheek, whispers against his palm.

"No, he was a man. As far as I know," she says, her voice a quiet, dry laugh. "Though Peter, I have my doubts about. He at least was under their influence."

[2goodarms]

He exhales another soundless laugh, without much humor.

Decades of hearing Wilford revered as a god; he thinks of the schoolteacher with her wide, manic grin, the rows of children singing and pantomiming their worship to the Sacred Engine. But the tail never believed him more than a man. The shock wasn't that he was cruel -- it was how deep that cruelty truly went.

The tail had their own gods instead. Like Gilliam.

And that still doesn't compare to actual angels turning on you.

"You survived," he murmurs. "What happened?"

[dejah_thoris]

She smiles against his palm, shakes her head. "John Carter. John Carter saw through their disguise and shattered it. He saved my life. He saved my people." It is an old sadness. Heavy but comfortable.

"He stood at my back while I figured out how to expose them. How to turn their technology against them."

She holds gently to his wrist at her cheek, her fingers curled around to rest on his pulse. Her other hand shifts from his cheek to his jaw, and so delicately, so carefully, curls around the back of his neck. Her fingertips stroke the short hairs at his nape.

"He died a natural death, over a hundred earth years ago. And I still miss him every day."

Her voice rises, almost becomes girlish at the end. Beneath the iron facade of the warrior queen, there is a flesh and blood woman. It is nothing more than the truth. She does not see ghosts of John in Curtis's face. If anything, she sees the promise of something she thought long since lost to her.

[2goodarms]

Curtis' breath catches. For an instant, his grip tightens involuntarily before he can refocus his thoughts.

It's difficult to reconcile: the sheer humanity of her words, the emotion behind them, and the reminder that she is so ancient compared to anyone -- anything -- Curtis knows. He can't fathom carrying a burden like that for a century. He would've discarded it long ago.

"How can you stand it?" he whispers.

[dejah_thoris]

He tightens his grip and she does as well, caught in the well of gravity between them.

"I put one foot in front of the other. I focus on my work, on my people. I just... keep moving."

By the end, she's clinging to him, unabashedly. He can hear the fatigue in her voice.

[2goodarms]

He doesn't think. He just pulls his hand free of hers, as gently as he can, so he can slip his arm around her shoulders.

(It's easier than he expected.)

"Me too."