Logs:For the Best
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| RL Date: 27 July, 2016 |
| Who: Lys, V'ret |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Lys and V'ret break up. |
| Where: The Women Watching Weyr, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 25, Month 5, Turn 41 (Interval 10) |
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| It cannot be said that Lys' regular visits can be considered regular anymore, given her long absence and equally long avoidance of the bronzerider who owns the ledge on which she now lingers. Evyth was polite enough to let Zoth know that Lys would like to see V'ret and would be waiting for him there, but Lys was prepared for a wait, if a wait was in store. She hasn't made herself comfortable within nor apparently helped herself to any of the amenities available in this particular weyr. She sits with her back against the stone out of the way of any dragon making a landing, but not so far in as to be encroaching on what might now be space restricted to unwelcome visitors, in case her cowardice has, indeed, made her one. V'ret isn't too long in returning, but he isn't there waiting for her. Zoth sits still long enough for his rider to dismount and attend to his straps before taking up a looming position on the ledge, keeping an eye on... something, someone, maybe many someones out there in the bowl, apparently disinterested in the young woman. V'ret's pulling his jacket off as soon as he's got the straps put away. He's looking a bit more rumpled, these days. He hasn't had a haircut, but maybe that's a deliberate choice? His hair was longer, once, after all. More notably, he's not smiling when he sees her there. "Did you leave something here?" No harsh edges to it, just a never-before-necessary formality. "A shirt, shorts and a hairbrush," Lys answers, having gotten to her feet in the time that it took him to dismount and deal with Zoth's straps. Her stance is awkward. It's been so long since the natural thing wasn't to go to him, to embrace and kiss him. Perhaps it still doesn't feel natural now to not do so, but she doesn't move from where she stands. It's only a beat later that she says, "It's not that I don't love you," as if that's a good place to start. "I'm sorry," might be another attempt to start, but she's obviously really bad at-- well, all this. "Ah." You'd think V'ret would have noticed these items. He heads into his weyr, though there seems to be some expectation that she might follow, there. Inside, his weyr has certainly seen better days, but then this is the first period he's occupied the place without someone else picking up after him. So, there's a sign he hasn't found some other girl to do his laundry--a bunch of it is piled on the sofa. There's an impressive collection of empty bottles clustered near the entrance, arranged standing on the floor like they're having a worried little meeting. "You don't have to say all that. It doesn't change anything." Some part of Lys probably wants to immediately set about fixing all the things that have been let go - particularly that worried meeting of so many, and probably the relationship on the whole, but avoidance for a month sends a message that isn't so easily undone as all that and if she gave herself time to stall a kneejerk reaction, she'd probably find herself saying the same thing she is now, as she follows him, "I'm not what you need me to be, Ev. I can't be all in right now. I can't-" perhaps she hasn't even nailed down all the 'can't' she feels. She lets a heavy breath go. "Would it be better if I said nothing? Would it be better if I didn't love you?" A few days in, V'ret might have indulged a sheepish bit of tidying up on their way in. But it's not like he's proud of this--more like it's hit a point where he hardly notices. He sits down to take his boots off, leaves them beside the chair. "I noticed," he says, able to maintain calm so long as he sticks to short phrases. It takes longer to steel himself for more. "It might have been better, once. Now, it doesn't matter, does it?" Notably absent: reassurances about his own feelings. "I think the hairbrush was in the bathroom. The rest, I don't know." There's frustration from the blonde. It's probably not that she wants him to lose his calm, but probably just that it all feels very hopeless from where she's sitting. "Maybe you'll hate me forever, too, but I can't be what I'm not. Maybe someday I could be all in, but that's not today, but it doesn't change that I love you, doesn't change that whatever I've been to you--" She grits her teeth and still the stride of pacing that managed to come unbidden, "Just because I can't be more doesn't mean that--" And she can't even find the words, "Fuck," and she turns to disappear into the bathing room to retrieve her wayward brush. "There was a girl before you, you know. There will be a girl after. There are a lot of girls." V'ret trails behind her, more in the fashion of lost duckling than spurned lover, lingers just outside the doorway, leans against the wall there but doesn't block it. "I could have been fine with less from you if you'd been less." More in those words than could have gone into any pat reassurance of his affections. "You can't. I can't. We can't. The world will keep spinning." How many days ago now? How many seconds, in aggregate, since he compared her to oxygen? Maybe he's very good at holding his breath. Maybe it only takes practice. He shifts away, moving back towards the bed, grabbing a shirt off the floor that is definitely not his, but doesn't turn to bring it back to her immediately. There are a lot of ways Lys could respond to his words as she searches for her brush. She's probably paying absolutely no attention to the fact that as she looks for it, she's tidying up his belongings to the way she always put them in the way that he seemed to like. Maybe, just maybe, if he doesn't comment, she'll clean the bedroom while she looks for her shorts and shirt, too. The looking buys her a little time to think and she stops and turns to look at him, only he's not there. Still, her voice reaches out to him. "There were no men before you. I don't love anyone else the way I love you." Of course, that doesn't change anything, but at least she finds her hairbrush and can move onto the bedroom to seek her other belongings. "You will. Give it time." This shouldn't be V'ret's job, the reassurances. Maybe the reassurance will distract from the question of whether he was or wasn't smelling her shirt when she walked out. No, surely not, just folding it with an efficiency that suggests he could totally handle all this laundry if he only wanted to. He hands it back to her, nudges about in another pile of clothes with his foot to dislodge the pair of shorts. Funny that he does seem to have a better idea of their locations, now. "You don't need to do that." Seems he has noticed what she was up to in there. "It's better this way." A mess? Maybe. He's not doing as well maintaining the facade; his own words make him flinch before it's smoothed away. He looks like a man who is not precisely well. Whatever secrets have been told don't apparently give her access to these private feelings, just enough to show that they aren't entirely in line with the careful words. Lys reaches to take the shirt when it's offered, and the backwards glance toward the bathing room doesn't yield much clarity about if she realized she was cleaning for him or not. The shirt is clutched to her chest along with the hairbrush, but really she looks like she'd rather be clutching him. "I don't want to," love anyone like him, presumably, maybe even all of this. To her credit, she does her best not to sound small and vulnerable. "But we're too far along to do things by half. There's no uncomplicated version of what we've become." She bites her lower lip, probably wishing he could come up with a better answer than anything she's been able to work out on her own. "Oh, Lys." V'ret's poise breaks again, and longer this time. "If you could just... all I..." He swallows down those half-sentences, starts again with more calm. "This." Carefully. "Wasn't. Meant. That's all. Another time or place, maybe, it would have been different." Who's breaking up with who? He's firm about it, this time. "You do whatever it is you need to do." While he rubs at his face, takes a deep breath. "Just don't do it here." It's not a good way to end this, a good way to say goodbye, but it's as good as he's getting to. "Maybe it will be meant someday. In another time." The words trip off Lys' tongue, colliding in their hurry to be voiced. Still, for all that she doesn't want to, she doesn't seem to have lost the resolve that brought her here. Just because she doesn't want to doesn't mean she won't do what's needed here, which is apparently to break up. She's quick to move to grab up her shorts, and if she drops her shirt and doesn't notice in the process, well, that makes them even when he finds she never did give back one of his that she liked. That could be it, really, except that she moves toward him instead of going. "One kiss?" She asks it as a quiet plea. It's a terrible idea, of course, but she's pretty terrible at all of this, so she would ask. "Another kiss will end me." V'ret could make all of this so much easier if he didn't seem to feel the need to be so damned melodramatic about it. His hands clench and unclench, not a threatening sort of fist, just a need to work off something in the way of tension in a moment where he doesn't seem to dare move any more than that. "If you'd--no, that would have been worse. Just go. Please? I really have things I need to be doing." Like laundry. Bets that he means laundry? The words are a verbal slap, even if he didn't mean them to be, and Lys flinches back accordingly. She doesn't look at him after that, perhaps it's a new "can't," even. She barely nods at his last words before she turns to flee. Nevermind that it'll be a minute or two more where she anxiously waits on the ledge for her ride, provided Zoth will allow Evyth landing. Not only does Zoth make plenty of room for Evyth to land, but he takes off just before Lys returns. V'ret may not have proven terribly considerate, but his dragon at least does not force her to endure any awkward audience for her pain. It's a kindness, if he's capable of such things. Or maybe he just happened to have something urgent to attend to elsewhere. |
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