He stares at his hands caught in hers, and thinks over the meaning. No, it's not like that. The truth of Lakshmi is so much more mercifully simple, it's almost stupid. It's one of the many things about her that sets his mind at ease.
It's an effort to force herself up that little bit, a hiss of pain she keeps low and to herself. She has no business expressing pain when she is the one that cannot die. Her head hangs, the loose mess of hair falling over her face and it makes it easy to smile even so, tucked away. "Perhaps not my life, but my humanity certainly."
A dig, how much he means to her is palpable, sometimes, something everyone else sees, certainly. "Or are you going to stubborn about my attempt to give you my thanks?"
It's not the kind of conversation he wants to get caught up in. Words turn to sand in his mouth, and he shrugs his rigid shoulders, back slightly stooped. "Nah," he says, because anything else would be too much and too little all at once.
"Then just say thanks. Don't gotta make it so flowery."
She watches him, careful, the loudest thing in the room, the quietest thing she knows. Always there, always at her back, in the way that is irritating as it is soothing. The one person that wouldn't want the attentions of a Queen when even now she feels people pandering to her out of the sheer impossibility of the things she is, the things she's seen. The only person she can ever say might be worthy of it.
Because in a hundred years, there is only ever been three people that would meet her in the worst of what she is, cut through it like the weapons she knew best. Hold her carefully not because she is a Queen, or because she drinks the blackwater, but he seems to see her what she is.
"Alright," she says and considers, alright and her hand slips up, a brush of her fingertips to his jaw. Curling gently against the two days of stubble, a careful relaxed motion that's nothing less than precise. A tilt up where she's propped up on the hand holding his to keep him there where she doesn't think she can afford to lose him. The one person in a century that it's true of and he is the only one who she can be sure won't take it from her body when she is too weak to defend herself. "I won't."
She kisses him, the corner of her mouth to his. The sleep and the exhaustion still in her movements. Light, barely that. As easy as a word and everything she could say in the manifold languages she speaks, made simple. A brush that means exactly nothing except that it means everything.
He doesn't move away, but he doesn't move closer either. There are things he could do or say, but it would all depend on feeling and thinking something other than the sudden dull thud of his stone heart against his ribs. He doesn't want this. He doesn't disdain it. He doesn't feel anything but the creeping feeling of his own rapidly approaching mistake.
He stays still, quiet and unmoving, until she's no longer touching him. "You're tired," he says, making her excuses for her. He stands. "Sleep."
"I am. But sleep won't fix it." She's slow to withdraw from it, but lets him, all the same. Want nor interest in trapping him. Said what she needs to say, and tired as she is - his suggestion is easy. Trailing across his jaw as he pulls from her, unwinds their fingers. It's not an excuse - she'd insist if she still weren't so exhausted, that it didn't change anything. She is tired and the sun rises and they are the words she gripped into his clothes as blood bubbled up her mouth.
But he wouldn't be him, she wouldn't have done it if he reacted any other way. Her fingers instead curling around the pillow again, drawing it into her. Tucking herself into it. Watching him underneath the blankets and forces the words up her lungs. "When it is my time, Daryl? You burn my body and you spill the blackwater to the ground."
She doesn't open her eyes, taking slow deep breaths against the pillow. "Have you never heard of letting people dream?" It's laughed out, rattling along her throat and shoulders. Like the sick are capable of. The slow way people die now. An adjustment of hours.
Perhaps she is just the same. If she were anyone else, she'd let it linger, feel the bite, feel the sickness, drag herself down to level of the living, hang there at the very edge, almost dead. "Besides, you know time has nothing to do with it."
He turns to her, slow and grim, like a door swinging stuck on its hinges. "You wanna die?"
His tone is judgmental. There's a right answer to this question. No flowery speech, no poetics. He'd prefer to cut through the shit, especially with Rani, who learned in fine palaces to hide in the spaces between words. If that ever worked on him, it doesn't anymore.
"It has nothing to do with that. I accept my death long before you drew breath, you cannot change that." It's snapped, direct - he wants her to be blunt with it. She will be, she supposes she owes him that much.
If he doesn't want to hear it - then that's that.
"It has nothing to do with my wants, do I wish to rest? Of course, I do. But do you not understand you are the only one I can trust?" Trust with her human parts, these soft weak things that live hunted under the skin like a wounded animal.
He looks down at her, sitting on the bed, warm and soft and alive. "Bullshit."
He knows her penchant for flowery words. Daryl dislikes them because of how easily they can hide the truth. Rani folds her true self up in pretty ideas and ancient stories and hides behind the past. Her age is her shield, and she uses it to lie to everyone and herself.
But she can't lie to him.
"You can trust all of us," he says. "You're afraid."
It occurs to him that he should be kinder. Maybe she wants comforting words? Maybe she wants comfort. That's probably what that kiss meant. But it's too late for that now.
It occurs her in that all too paranoid way that the others cannot be far from this closed room and these walls are not so thick - that they will hear this argument when it piques. Neither of their tempers are their best traits. How well they suit, she thinks grimly, when they're growling like dogs with teeth in each other's throats. ( Refusing to let go, she wonders because they are too stubborn, or because neither of them knows how. )
"Of course I'm afraid." It's barked, snapped, pushing up on the bed, bedraggled still, dressed down to where she's got the blanket tucked under arm to keep herself covered. Maybe that's for the best. "But you are the one that doesn't want to hear so much as a word of truth, you're too busy in pretending that you feel nothing that you can't handle so much as a breath of my death."
Which would be -- sweet, if it wasn't irritating her, she can't afford to be precious, not about the black water.
Daryl's expression turns hard, cold. Where he was impassive before, his hackles raise. How dare she call him a coward, after all he's done? All they've done together?
(Does she really think so little of him?)
No longer caring who hears-- if he even cared to begin with-- he barks back, "Lost my taste for death, but if you're so hot for it, go ahead." He turns to leave, his steps quick and angry.
Bites back, like she wants to rip the words out of his mouth. "If I do, it will be no business of yours or anyone else to decide whether I should or not." Cursed at his back, watching him walk away from her.
She doesn't mean it, of course she doesn't. But it hardly mattered, not now, when they're were spitting up bile.
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no subject
"Nah," he says. "It never is."
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A dig, how much he means to her is palpable, sometimes, something everyone else sees, certainly. "Or are you going to stubborn about my attempt to give you my thanks?"
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"Then just say thanks. Don't gotta make it so flowery."
no subject
Because in a hundred years, there is only ever been three people that would meet her in the worst of what she is, cut through it like the weapons she knew best. Hold her carefully not because she is a Queen, or because she drinks the blackwater, but he seems to see her what she is.
"Alright," she says and considers, alright and her hand slips up, a brush of her fingertips to his jaw. Curling gently against the two days of stubble, a careful relaxed motion that's nothing less than precise. A tilt up where she's propped up on the hand holding his to keep him there where she doesn't think she can afford to lose him. The one person in a century that it's true of and he is the only one who she can be sure won't take it from her body when she is too weak to defend herself. "I won't."
She kisses him, the corner of her mouth to his. The sleep and the exhaustion still in her movements. Light, barely that. As easy as a word and everything she could say in the manifold languages she speaks, made simple. A brush that means exactly nothing except that it means everything.
no subject
He stays still, quiet and unmoving, until she's no longer touching him. "You're tired," he says, making her excuses for her. He stands. "Sleep."
no subject
But he wouldn't be him, she wouldn't have done it if he reacted any other way. Her fingers instead curling around the pillow again, drawing it into her. Tucking herself into it. Watching him underneath the blankets and forces the words up her lungs. "When it is my time, Daryl? You burn my body and you spill the blackwater to the ground."
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"Ain't your time." Maybe it will never be.
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Perhaps she is just the same. If she were anyone else, she'd let it linger, feel the bite, feel the sickness, drag herself down to level of the living, hang there at the very edge, almost dead. "Besides, you know time has nothing to do with it."
no subject
His tone is judgmental. There's a right answer to this question. No flowery speech, no poetics. He'd prefer to cut through the shit, especially with Rani, who learned in fine palaces to hide in the spaces between words. If that ever worked on him, it doesn't anymore.
"Gonna let this world beat you?"
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If he doesn't want to hear it - then that's that.
"It has nothing to do with my wants, do I wish to rest? Of course, I do. But do you not understand you are the only one I can trust?" Trust with her human parts, these soft weak things that live hunted under the skin like a wounded animal.
no subject
He knows her penchant for flowery words. Daryl dislikes them because of how easily they can hide the truth. Rani folds her true self up in pretty ideas and ancient stories and hides behind the past. Her age is her shield, and she uses it to lie to everyone and herself.
But she can't lie to him.
"You can trust all of us," he says. "You're afraid."
It occurs to him that he should be kinder. Maybe she wants comforting words? Maybe she wants comfort. That's probably what that kiss meant. But it's too late for that now.
no subject
"Of course I'm afraid." It's barked, snapped, pushing up on the bed, bedraggled still, dressed down to where she's got the blanket tucked under arm to keep herself covered. Maybe that's for the best. "But you are the one that doesn't want to hear so much as a word of truth, you're too busy in pretending that you feel nothing that you can't handle so much as a breath of my death."
Which would be -- sweet, if it wasn't irritating her, she can't afford to be precious, not about the black water.
no subject
(Does she really think so little of him?)
No longer caring who hears-- if he even cared to begin with-- he barks back, "Lost my taste for death, but if you're so hot for it, go ahead." He turns to leave, his steps quick and angry.
no subject
She doesn't mean it, of course she doesn't. But it hardly mattered, not now, when they're were spitting up bile.