15S R4 Week 2 Saturday Night

[joinhands]

[OK, so, if you were following a briskly walking crying lady, you would find yourself in the game room at a dead end. Which is surely for the best. Except, gosh, who moved the iron maiden so the open part is facing the wall. How negligent.

Spoilers Krone is sitting on the ground behind it crying with her arms hugged around her knees.]

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[joinhands]

[Krone cycles through various degrees of gently amused at his awkwkardness about the entire (what he'd undoubtedly call the) fairer sex but when he comes out with that last desperate vow she's close to cracking up. Christ, he's a pretty mess, rose wine spilled over a renaissance painting. Eric always looks to be worshipping something, like those Catholics in modern France who can't bring themselves to mention it in company anymore. She feels bad dismissing his efforts, really she does, so as she finally bursts out laughing she flaps up both her hands in the air. No, I'm not armed! It's the longest he ever heard her laugh, just plain bending over like she can't breathe.]

It's just that—you can't call her a woman. She was only fourteen.

[Wait, so if Cecil was the older one, that means Krone...?!

Then she stands up as she'd have to do to hang him up on the wall.] You will, though. I'll hold you to it. OK, Eric?

[yonosoymaria]

[He isn't sure what he's done to earn that laughter, but it's also obvious enough that it isn't meant cruelly. Such a sound couldn't be.

And then it's clear. She fell when she was young, too, though she was the younger, and younger than he had been by far... He brushes away thoughts of John at fifteen, already tall and broad-shouldered as Theseus, as Patroclus. Those are memories he doesn't want this place to steal.

Her hands seem to frame him as though she's the sculptor and he the model whose imitated form could scandalize a generation of critics who needed to be. (He has given it thought, of course - he'd portray her as Minerva, in dark bronze that would evoke well the richness of her skin and hair. Minerva, but not sedate, no, a goddess of wisdom and war.) He nods - for a moment there's no other response he can make. She trusts him to be the best that he can.]

Of course. We should both do our best, shouldn't we?