Post by Liessel on Apr 3, 2024 13:25:03 GMT -5
A quiet side from Harroway that I've been meaning to get posted. This takes place in the short time between Gerold and co arriving in Harroway and when they head off to face Giessler
Quiet moments seemed hard to come by when there was little space for privacy, but somehow she managed to find a window. Not knowing how long it would be open was the driving force behind her words. So, it wasn't really any different than trying to steal a moment at the Knightsbridge house when it was at its fullest. Not really.
Liessel found Gerold, her hands balancing the weight of her Flynn kit where it hung at her hip to keep it from swaying too hard as she came to a stop. What she said to him was short, and simple. She had learned to let go of preamble in situations like this, or she liked to think she had, "I am sorry," The priestess said to the old ranger, "That we left you there like that, Mister Schoen."
"The last thing I want in the world--any world--is your pity and your apology," Gerold said flatly. He was leaning a little on his horse, but doing a good job of making it look easy and natural. They were moving; he had not stopped. "I'm here now. Put me to use."
"I did not think it was pity at all," Liessel answered, breathing out heavily enough that her shoulders settled, "But forget I said anything of it at all, if it is not what you wish to hear. I --" she cast a glance back over her shoulder toward where the largest hive of activity was gathered while they prepared to be underway, then she was looking back toward him, "Just couldn't leave it unsaid."
But forget I said anything of it at all…
Gerold Schoen's eyebrows rose at her tone. It was that particular tone of hurt and want-you-to-know-it obliqueness. He didn't think he'd ever heard it from Liessel before. All well and good or not, it probably had its desired effect, in that he was forced to recalibrate and rethink what he thought he'd heard. His basic sentiment remained, but-- "I'm sorry, Liessel. Maybe the pity was my own."
"It -- hasn't -- changed, then?" Her question was asked carefully, not because she didn't want to know. It was quite the opposite, actually. She thought she already knew.
"What do you mean?"
The problem. The thing that beat in his chest like a dying drum. They had many dances like that, skipping across the surface of that issue. She didn't want to do that again, not with him so she took another breath and braced herself before coming out with, "Your heart. Your -- state -- of things. Its -- unchanged?"
There was such a mountain of possible responses to this topic, here and now, and Gerold found himself leaning away from all of them but one. "Liessel," he said, "I'm here. I have work to do. Whatever you tell me. Wherever you send me. So in that, everything has changed."
It was not the way she wanted it to happen, but that was blown clean out of the water when the Surveyors showed up in London. Plans had changed, and then changed again. But that was the way of things. Wasn't it? And in this it had worked out, because he was there. He had made it with Eddie and Eli. That thought brought with it a melting of whatever careful edge she had pulled to herself and she gave him a nod, unable to speak for a moment before managing to softly say, "I am so glad you made it."
"I wish that had been your hello," he said, sighing with it, nodding back to her. "I'm glad to see you whole and healthy."
"I am beginning to wish that, too," Her admission came with her stepping forward to close what little distance there was between them, "As for whole --" She cast another glance over her shoulder and shook her head, "The pieces are certainly forming themselves back together."
To come in like a hero--after no small effort, mind--and be met, at last, by the very person to whom you hoped to be of service, and to have the very first words they say to you be I am sorry, the very first memory raised one of your own helpless ignorance and their regret... Gerold Schoen would have given anything to have had it different.
It was what it was.
Liessel was nothing if not a serial apologizer. A long-term reassurer of others that if she'd had her way, the world they lived in would be different.
Gerold knew this. He held out his hand for hers. "We should meet up with the others. I can make this moment up to you by promising a later, better moment for the two of us, wherein I leave the horse to its own devices and we can smoke together."
Her hand was there, easily meeting his own, "I think that promise should be made the other way around," As her hand closed against his, Liessel gave a gentle squeeze. He was there, and as solid as he had ever been, every line where it needed to be and every white whisker shifting with every word he spoke, "But I think this moment is as perfect as it ever could be."
With her hand, he pulled her in for a one-armed hug.
There was indeed a dense core of this that he would not have changed. Words, he would have changed. His own health, he would have changed. His sense of himself, the same. But that individual heart was very simple.
He'd said it himself: he was here, and Liessel was here with him, and there was the old familiar promise that he'd relied on all his life. That action taken might just change fates.
Pulled in, the hug was warmly returned. When they had set out for Harroway she had been given no idea what might happen, or when she might see those who had been left behind again. This, it was a dream come true. Not the 'how' of how they got there, or the 'why' of why it had happened. It was that he was there, and that Eddie had made it with him. Eli was a pleasant surprise, all of them were. And that was what made it perfect. "If I close my eyes, and then open them," She heard herself breathe into the embrace, "You will still be here, right?"
"Try it." The two words were barely picked up by the air, but she'd feel it through him.
Gerold Schoen had no claim on divine essence, or clairvoyance, despite his own meager gifts. It had been Caribou, in truth, that had let them race across impossible distances in World B-2. It was Seth that got him into impossible places. Sometimes, the magic of others helped him to be in the right place at the right time. For himself, he'd always lived best in the moment.
Right now, with the threat of frailty stitched right into the clothes he wore, he needed to be in the moment more than ever.
It wasn't the possibility that his presence wasn't fact that brought moisture to the corners of her eyes. It was the thought that it was the exact opposite. He was there, and she could feel him breathing, she could feel the warmth of his arm as it held her close from across her shoulder. Gerold's voice, no morr than a whisper rumbled with something that went deeper than the senses, and Liessel had felt all of it before. But she knew this was no figment. How could it be?
Her free hand came up to lightly rest against Gerold's chest while she breathed out slowly, shut her eyes, and pushed away just enough so that, in the next moment when she titled her head back and opened her eyes, she would be looking up and seeking his gaze.
And she would find him staring down at her.
That tripped greeting didn't matter anymore; his brow was furrowed as if he thought he might crush her, or as if she might unfurl butterfly wings, or as if he were trapped between things to say, things to do. The moment held in that tension, vibrating. He was undeniably still there. Liessel was unmistakably real. The eggshell edges of Gerold's fears and hopes crackled against each other.
He didn't waver. There was no warbling at the edges or smudging of details. There was no fading to any level of the Gerold Schoen she held on to, just as she knew there wouldn't be.
The arm she had wrapped around him was joined by the other, the movement of her hand barely shifting the shirt he wore as she lowered her gaze and shifted back in to kiss his chest just over his beating, but labored, heart. That it was so tortured didn't matter just then, that his life was so pulled tightly between duty, and health was a fiction so flimsy that it could have been a cloud passing overhead, "I am so very glad that you came." The moisture at the edges of her eyes became tears, but not even that mattered. It all paled so greatly in the face of fact. Not even the danger that laid ahead could touch it.
Well, who are you?
And who are you going to be?
The man who risks nothing for fear of pain, or the man who takes the chance?
A jumble of gruff, and tough, words piled up in Gerold Schoen's mouth. None of them were the right ones. They were old habits, brick-sided and made to wall out eyes.
"I want to be here," he heard himself say. "Right where I am."
There was so much that could go wrong. She had brought with her so much of a life she chose, and with it came so much to lose. Her life was so much more full for those who had come with her, and now with those who had come on their own.
It was very much like feeling Eidole beating within her chest, but the warmth was all her own and just then she was sharing it with Gerold Schoen. "Gerold..." his name came on a breath and her words stopped there. Could she dare breathe them with what had happened in her past? Was it too much under the weight of what he suffered and what they were about to face? Was it too foolish to think that possibly... and what of her vows? Did they matter anymore? And what of....
To hell with it.
What good was wanting to fall with the rest of them if she didn't let herself?
She drew in a breath and spoke, "And nothing in all of the worlds could change that truth, nor could it change this one: I care for you Gerold. Deeply. Immeasurably. And if that changes anything between us, then let it be for the better. I'd rather have you know, now, than to leave it unspoken."
I care for you.
Deeply.
Immeasurably.
Gerold heard the rest. That is, the rest entered his ears, his brain. He did not move; gazed at her as before. He was waiting, because she sounded like she was pushing toward the edge of something.
To hell with it.
Every tiny bit of her being felt like it was trembling. She'd stood at this threshold before and had the scars to prove it. Words failed her as that thought came, threatening to shake her resolve. That he hadn't pushed her away yet, or backed away himself helped shore up her courage.
Maybe she wasn't speaking clear enough? Plain enough? Maybe he was hearing words that didn't translate well.
She pulled back just enough to bring her right hand up between him and her, resting on his heart before turning to rest over her own in that slim space between them, "My heart and yours'. I -- do not want to call it 'love' and risk heartbreak because I could not bear that from you, if that is not something that can be given. But regardless, you will always have a place like that within my heart."
Gerold stared at her.
She'd kissed his chest. A gift from her was cradled in his coat.
Her voice fluttered soft as moth wings between them.
"I do no want to call it 'love'--"
"Well then I will," he said flatly, eyeing her now with a squint.
Her right hand rose in that little space between them, her fingertips catching the tears at the corners of her eyes and swiping them away. "Thank you," she said, the words in their softness matched by the gentle smile that came when she looked up, met his gaze and spoke.
It felt like such a silly little response, hardly fitting at all but it was all she could think of in the face of what she was feeling. Everything else seemed just as stricken of logic and sense.
Gerold Schoen's To hell with it just now meant bracing hard against all of his own fears. There were many. Some were profound, some petty. Many had roots in vanity. Many had roots in mortality. They would not die when he marched forward. He simply had to keep his back to them and accept that they would whisper on.
"I love you, Liessel Erphale."
His arm was low around the small of her back.
"I won't let anyone hurt you."
Her eyes shut, her smile deepened and her head lowered until her forehead was resting against his chest. What were fears in the face of that? And not just that, not just from him. It was that she felt it, too, and here it was come to life between them. And all it had taken was for the worlds to bring them together and give them the chance to know each other despite all the pain, and all of the trouble. Despite all the fear.
"I love you, too, Gerold Schoen." She breathed, "I know I cannot promise the same," because his work was dangerous. The company he kept: dangerous. He didn't need a maid, though. He didn't need a nurse. "But I can promise that I am here for you in whatever capacity you want of me."
"I need no promises," he told her, as if she should have known that. As if he hoped that everything about him proclaimed as much.
Liessel's head lifted from where she rested it, and she looked up to meet his gaze. How close in color their eyes were. Would they have been even closer in his youth? "I know," she whispered to him, "but I give it all the same. Because if you are allowed to give promises that are not needed, Mister Schoen, then so am I."
To that, Gerold said nothing. This was not the time for nearly anything. He said, "Let's do what needs doing, so we can be ourselves and talk."
"Yes," Liessel answered, her head turning as if she were suddenly reaware that there was a forest around them, jobs that needed to be done, and friends waiting. Duty first, always.
As she drew back though, Liessel gave Gerold a coy smile, "I have something to show you when that time comes."
"Do you?" He eased back, too, arm slipping, and eyed her curiously. 'Coy' was not a look he was quite ready for from her, and he realized he was trying to figure out the look itself and how it sat on her features. "Tell me."
The way her smile deepened erased the reluctance as she took a step back, her hand falling to rest on the leather parcel that hung by her hip. Within was the pipe he'd given her, and the small leather roll of tobacco. "I've been practicing. I think I've figured the smoke rings out."
He laughed. --then winced, but what did a headache matter? "I expect you to show off unabashedly."
Liessel's smile held, then faded into concern when Gerold winced. She knew he wasn't exactly healed from the blow to his head, but seeing evidence of it only drilled home just what that meant for him, "Aye, I intend to." she answered softly, as that would be then. What mattered now was, "are you alright?"
The question caught him up again, and he waved it off. "I'll let you know if I'm not fit."
Standing there before Gerold, Liessel took her time weighing that against what she was seeing, and against both of those the promise she had made. After a moment, Liessel gave a small nod. That was one promise that was needed. "Alright, I will hold you to that Mister Schoen. In the meantime," she offered her right hand, "Let us get to work."
Quiet moments seemed hard to come by when there was little space for privacy, but somehow she managed to find a window. Not knowing how long it would be open was the driving force behind her words. So, it wasn't really any different than trying to steal a moment at the Knightsbridge house when it was at its fullest. Not really.
Liessel found Gerold, her hands balancing the weight of her Flynn kit where it hung at her hip to keep it from swaying too hard as she came to a stop. What she said to him was short, and simple. She had learned to let go of preamble in situations like this, or she liked to think she had, "I am sorry," The priestess said to the old ranger, "That we left you there like that, Mister Schoen."
"The last thing I want in the world--any world--is your pity and your apology," Gerold said flatly. He was leaning a little on his horse, but doing a good job of making it look easy and natural. They were moving; he had not stopped. "I'm here now. Put me to use."
"I did not think it was pity at all," Liessel answered, breathing out heavily enough that her shoulders settled, "But forget I said anything of it at all, if it is not what you wish to hear. I --" she cast a glance back over her shoulder toward where the largest hive of activity was gathered while they prepared to be underway, then she was looking back toward him, "Just couldn't leave it unsaid."
But forget I said anything of it at all…
Gerold Schoen's eyebrows rose at her tone. It was that particular tone of hurt and want-you-to-know-it obliqueness. He didn't think he'd ever heard it from Liessel before. All well and good or not, it probably had its desired effect, in that he was forced to recalibrate and rethink what he thought he'd heard. His basic sentiment remained, but-- "I'm sorry, Liessel. Maybe the pity was my own."
"It -- hasn't -- changed, then?" Her question was asked carefully, not because she didn't want to know. It was quite the opposite, actually. She thought she already knew.
"What do you mean?"
The problem. The thing that beat in his chest like a dying drum. They had many dances like that, skipping across the surface of that issue. She didn't want to do that again, not with him so she took another breath and braced herself before coming out with, "Your heart. Your -- state -- of things. Its -- unchanged?"
There was such a mountain of possible responses to this topic, here and now, and Gerold found himself leaning away from all of them but one. "Liessel," he said, "I'm here. I have work to do. Whatever you tell me. Wherever you send me. So in that, everything has changed."
It was not the way she wanted it to happen, but that was blown clean out of the water when the Surveyors showed up in London. Plans had changed, and then changed again. But that was the way of things. Wasn't it? And in this it had worked out, because he was there. He had made it with Eddie and Eli. That thought brought with it a melting of whatever careful edge she had pulled to herself and she gave him a nod, unable to speak for a moment before managing to softly say, "I am so glad you made it."
"I wish that had been your hello," he said, sighing with it, nodding back to her. "I'm glad to see you whole and healthy."
"I am beginning to wish that, too," Her admission came with her stepping forward to close what little distance there was between them, "As for whole --" She cast another glance over her shoulder and shook her head, "The pieces are certainly forming themselves back together."
To come in like a hero--after no small effort, mind--and be met, at last, by the very person to whom you hoped to be of service, and to have the very first words they say to you be I am sorry, the very first memory raised one of your own helpless ignorance and their regret... Gerold Schoen would have given anything to have had it different.
It was what it was.
Liessel was nothing if not a serial apologizer. A long-term reassurer of others that if she'd had her way, the world they lived in would be different.
Gerold knew this. He held out his hand for hers. "We should meet up with the others. I can make this moment up to you by promising a later, better moment for the two of us, wherein I leave the horse to its own devices and we can smoke together."
Her hand was there, easily meeting his own, "I think that promise should be made the other way around," As her hand closed against his, Liessel gave a gentle squeeze. He was there, and as solid as he had ever been, every line where it needed to be and every white whisker shifting with every word he spoke, "But I think this moment is as perfect as it ever could be."
With her hand, he pulled her in for a one-armed hug.
There was indeed a dense core of this that he would not have changed. Words, he would have changed. His own health, he would have changed. His sense of himself, the same. But that individual heart was very simple.
He'd said it himself: he was here, and Liessel was here with him, and there was the old familiar promise that he'd relied on all his life. That action taken might just change fates.
Pulled in, the hug was warmly returned. When they had set out for Harroway she had been given no idea what might happen, or when she might see those who had been left behind again. This, it was a dream come true. Not the 'how' of how they got there, or the 'why' of why it had happened. It was that he was there, and that Eddie had made it with him. Eli was a pleasant surprise, all of them were. And that was what made it perfect. "If I close my eyes, and then open them," She heard herself breathe into the embrace, "You will still be here, right?"
"Try it." The two words were barely picked up by the air, but she'd feel it through him.
Gerold Schoen had no claim on divine essence, or clairvoyance, despite his own meager gifts. It had been Caribou, in truth, that had let them race across impossible distances in World B-2. It was Seth that got him into impossible places. Sometimes, the magic of others helped him to be in the right place at the right time. For himself, he'd always lived best in the moment.
Right now, with the threat of frailty stitched right into the clothes he wore, he needed to be in the moment more than ever.
It wasn't the possibility that his presence wasn't fact that brought moisture to the corners of her eyes. It was the thought that it was the exact opposite. He was there, and she could feel him breathing, she could feel the warmth of his arm as it held her close from across her shoulder. Gerold's voice, no morr than a whisper rumbled with something that went deeper than the senses, and Liessel had felt all of it before. But she knew this was no figment. How could it be?
Her free hand came up to lightly rest against Gerold's chest while she breathed out slowly, shut her eyes, and pushed away just enough so that, in the next moment when she titled her head back and opened her eyes, she would be looking up and seeking his gaze.
And she would find him staring down at her.
That tripped greeting didn't matter anymore; his brow was furrowed as if he thought he might crush her, or as if she might unfurl butterfly wings, or as if he were trapped between things to say, things to do. The moment held in that tension, vibrating. He was undeniably still there. Liessel was unmistakably real. The eggshell edges of Gerold's fears and hopes crackled against each other.
He didn't waver. There was no warbling at the edges or smudging of details. There was no fading to any level of the Gerold Schoen she held on to, just as she knew there wouldn't be.
The arm she had wrapped around him was joined by the other, the movement of her hand barely shifting the shirt he wore as she lowered her gaze and shifted back in to kiss his chest just over his beating, but labored, heart. That it was so tortured didn't matter just then, that his life was so pulled tightly between duty, and health was a fiction so flimsy that it could have been a cloud passing overhead, "I am so very glad that you came." The moisture at the edges of her eyes became tears, but not even that mattered. It all paled so greatly in the face of fact. Not even the danger that laid ahead could touch it.
Well, who are you?
And who are you going to be?
The man who risks nothing for fear of pain, or the man who takes the chance?
A jumble of gruff, and tough, words piled up in Gerold Schoen's mouth. None of them were the right ones. They were old habits, brick-sided and made to wall out eyes.
"I want to be here," he heard himself say. "Right where I am."
There was so much that could go wrong. She had brought with her so much of a life she chose, and with it came so much to lose. Her life was so much more full for those who had come with her, and now with those who had come on their own.
It was very much like feeling Eidole beating within her chest, but the warmth was all her own and just then she was sharing it with Gerold Schoen. "Gerold..." his name came on a breath and her words stopped there. Could she dare breathe them with what had happened in her past? Was it too much under the weight of what he suffered and what they were about to face? Was it too foolish to think that possibly... and what of her vows? Did they matter anymore? And what of....
To hell with it.
What good was wanting to fall with the rest of them if she didn't let herself?
She drew in a breath and spoke, "And nothing in all of the worlds could change that truth, nor could it change this one: I care for you Gerold. Deeply. Immeasurably. And if that changes anything between us, then let it be for the better. I'd rather have you know, now, than to leave it unspoken."
I care for you.
Deeply.
Immeasurably.
Gerold heard the rest. That is, the rest entered his ears, his brain. He did not move; gazed at her as before. He was waiting, because she sounded like she was pushing toward the edge of something.
To hell with it.
Every tiny bit of her being felt like it was trembling. She'd stood at this threshold before and had the scars to prove it. Words failed her as that thought came, threatening to shake her resolve. That he hadn't pushed her away yet, or backed away himself helped shore up her courage.
Maybe she wasn't speaking clear enough? Plain enough? Maybe he was hearing words that didn't translate well.
She pulled back just enough to bring her right hand up between him and her, resting on his heart before turning to rest over her own in that slim space between them, "My heart and yours'. I -- do not want to call it 'love' and risk heartbreak because I could not bear that from you, if that is not something that can be given. But regardless, you will always have a place like that within my heart."
Gerold stared at her.
She'd kissed his chest. A gift from her was cradled in his coat.
Her voice fluttered soft as moth wings between them.
"I do no want to call it 'love'--"
"Well then I will," he said flatly, eyeing her now with a squint.
Her right hand rose in that little space between them, her fingertips catching the tears at the corners of her eyes and swiping them away. "Thank you," she said, the words in their softness matched by the gentle smile that came when she looked up, met his gaze and spoke.
It felt like such a silly little response, hardly fitting at all but it was all she could think of in the face of what she was feeling. Everything else seemed just as stricken of logic and sense.
Gerold Schoen's To hell with it just now meant bracing hard against all of his own fears. There were many. Some were profound, some petty. Many had roots in vanity. Many had roots in mortality. They would not die when he marched forward. He simply had to keep his back to them and accept that they would whisper on.
"I love you, Liessel Erphale."
His arm was low around the small of her back.
"I won't let anyone hurt you."
Her eyes shut, her smile deepened and her head lowered until her forehead was resting against his chest. What were fears in the face of that? And not just that, not just from him. It was that she felt it, too, and here it was come to life between them. And all it had taken was for the worlds to bring them together and give them the chance to know each other despite all the pain, and all of the trouble. Despite all the fear.
"I love you, too, Gerold Schoen." She breathed, "I know I cannot promise the same," because his work was dangerous. The company he kept: dangerous. He didn't need a maid, though. He didn't need a nurse. "But I can promise that I am here for you in whatever capacity you want of me."
"I need no promises," he told her, as if she should have known that. As if he hoped that everything about him proclaimed as much.
Liessel's head lifted from where she rested it, and she looked up to meet his gaze. How close in color their eyes were. Would they have been even closer in his youth? "I know," she whispered to him, "but I give it all the same. Because if you are allowed to give promises that are not needed, Mister Schoen, then so am I."
To that, Gerold said nothing. This was not the time for nearly anything. He said, "Let's do what needs doing, so we can be ourselves and talk."
"Yes," Liessel answered, her head turning as if she were suddenly reaware that there was a forest around them, jobs that needed to be done, and friends waiting. Duty first, always.
As she drew back though, Liessel gave Gerold a coy smile, "I have something to show you when that time comes."
"Do you?" He eased back, too, arm slipping, and eyed her curiously. 'Coy' was not a look he was quite ready for from her, and he realized he was trying to figure out the look itself and how it sat on her features. "Tell me."
The way her smile deepened erased the reluctance as she took a step back, her hand falling to rest on the leather parcel that hung by her hip. Within was the pipe he'd given her, and the small leather roll of tobacco. "I've been practicing. I think I've figured the smoke rings out."
He laughed. --then winced, but what did a headache matter? "I expect you to show off unabashedly."
Liessel's smile held, then faded into concern when Gerold winced. She knew he wasn't exactly healed from the blow to his head, but seeing evidence of it only drilled home just what that meant for him, "Aye, I intend to." she answered softly, as that would be then. What mattered now was, "are you alright?"
The question caught him up again, and he waved it off. "I'll let you know if I'm not fit."
Standing there before Gerold, Liessel took her time weighing that against what she was seeing, and against both of those the promise she had made. After a moment, Liessel gave a small nod. That was one promise that was needed. "Alright, I will hold you to that Mister Schoen. In the meantime," she offered her right hand, "Let us get to work."