Logs:Showdown
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| RL Date: 24 July, 2012 |
| Who: Iolene, K'del |
| Type: [[Concept:{{{type}}}|{{{type}}}]] |
| What: A bad day finally spurs K'del into the argument he and Iolene have been stepping around for weeks. |
| Where: K'del's Weyr, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 27, Month 4, Turn 29 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Azaylia/Mentions, Brieli/Mentions, Lujayn/Mentions, Tiriana/Mentions |
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| K'del's Weyr, High Reaches Weyr Rank certainly has its privileges, and among them are amply appointed apartments. The short flight of stairs from the Weyrleader's Complex opens up into the larger of two chambers, formally decorated and clearly designed to cater as much to important guests as the occupant's personal living. Old, but obviously expensive, llama wool rugs dyed blue-and-black cover the stone floor, leading towards the second chamber, the stairs, and the rush-filled dragon couch and ledge beyond it. A formal seating arrangement - a sofa and chairs, all blue-and-black - sits around a large, tiled fireplace, whilst along the other wall, a finely made, if now somewhat antique, desk sits between a bookshelf and a tall cupboard to which tack-hooks have been attached, riding gear arranged neatly inside. Two tapestries hung from the high walls depict overdone splendour for High Reaches Weyr, one a long view of the snow-covered bowl, and the other a hazy impressionist piece of dragons flaming over a springtime countryside. The inner weyr, made up of a sleeping cavern and a private bathing area, is smaller and cosier and distinctly less ostentatious. An oversized wooden sleigh bed fills much of the space, the mattress piled high with overstuffed down pillows and comforter, their covers dyed in varying shades of navy blue, light blue and bronze. There's a nightstand on either side, both with reading lamps, and against one of the other walls, a tall, heavy wardrobe made from a dark wood that matches the bed. The bathing area is part of the same cavern, a folding screen shielding the toilet and slightly raised, double-sized bathtub built into the stone, and a small shelf holding toiletries, shaving equipment, and clean towels. The initial elation of the flight didn't last long, and it's been, in the end, an awkward, strange couple of weeks, full of silences and things unsaid. There's been an argument brewing for a while, now, but K'del for one seems unable to actually begin it - and so life has continued, casual domesticity carrying on largely uninterrupted. It's the end of a pleasant spring day, now, but K'del's mood doesn't seem to have been improved by it: the stomping of his boots on the steps leading up to the weyr announce more than just his return home. Her work might live in the Weyrwoman's weyr, along with most of her things, but in spite of the fraught tension, Iolene's life has slowly encroached upon K'del's. There are more of her belongings in his caves; a stack of clothing set on a chair, hair pins strewn along his dresser, and even her toothbrush. Iolene, herself, is seated at the table, a fork full of some spring greens dressed in a vinaigrette being brought to her mouth. There's a whole pie set in the center of the table, topped with a cute dollop of cream. In between eating, she thumbs through a set of hides and hums idle tunes. But it's the sound of the footsteps that quickens her chewing and subsequent swallow; "... Done for the day?" And so K'del's not surprised to find Iolene there, though it's possible it makes him just that little bit more irritated-- whatever has set off this mood is unlikely to have been the goldrider herself, but she's here, and, well, it doesn't help. At first, it may seem as though he doesn't intend to answer her at all, making himself too busy with the unlacing of boots and the warming of chilled hands at the hearth. But there it is, the picking-a-fight reply: "As long as no one else comes to me in a flurry of panic or frustration. Hraedhyth has been stealing people's ledges again." Iolene is a frequent practitioner of knowing obliviousness; that maddening condition where someone is oblivious even if there is a small iota of understanding. The fork to the salad greens halt, and she uses the tines to poke near the center of the pie, careful not to dislodge the cute little whipped cream dollop. "A weyrling dragon stealing ledges causes panic?" Dark eyes, oblivious and naive, lift (along with a forkful of early strawberry pie) to find K'del. There's that hint of knowing in the chide of her gaze. "Unless Hraedhyth's projecting her booming drums into people's heads, I doubt they're really all that panicked. Pie?" The lifted fork is raised furhter to the bronzerider. "That's not what people are panicked about," K'del gets out, through teeth that could almost (almost!) be described as 'gritted'. He's not looking at Iolene as he speaks, rather as though he can't bring himself to do so; nor does he answer her offer of pie. "Do you simply not intend for the new goldriders to ever have weyrs?" This time, he's aiming for conversational - though it fails, unquestionably, and simply sounds petulant and pointed. How the conversation goes from panic to weyrs draws a genuine sense of mystified on Iolene's face. And so her response is a rather baffled, "Huh?" Oh, Io. Of all the things she could have said, right at this moment, that is perhaps the most frustrating - as if it were deliberately designed to irritate and yes, infuriate. Now, he turns around, seeking out Iolene with an expression that shows all of those feelings, baldly. "Weyrs, Iolene. You know, like the one we're in now? They should have had them weeks ago, and you never assigned them, so Hraedhyth is stealing other people's, and they're complaining to me, oh, and hey, you fired all the Headwoman's staff and they're worried about what else you're going to do and want me to tell them. And shells, I don't even know anymore. Don't have the faintest fucking idea." K'del's anger, combined with the tension of the past few weeks, somehow ignites the meeker side of Iolene, and a wide-eyed, mouth-gaped expression finds the bronzerider. Words, they attempt to spill out, but in his litany of issues, all focused on her, end up failing until he's done. And silent. And the expletive is hanging in the air between them. "I-... you... I didn't know that was something I should do." The rest? There's no answer for that other than her lowered gaze and trembling lips. The fork of strawberry pie falls, sending its red juices splattering against the table. Not knowing is probably less satisfying an answer than K'del might have liked; another answer might have let him rail further, given more credence to this anger that has finally simmered over into action. Even so: "If you hadn't fired the staff, maybe you'd know," he snaps. "They weren't Tiriana's creatures. Giorda was hired under Satiet, and promoted by Milani, who was definitely never Tiriana's." He and Milani may not be lovers anymore, but they have a son; they no doubt talk. "You have to walk before you can run. And damn it, Iolene, you have to talk to your Weyrleader." It's the perfect night for saying the wrong things. "You never seem to want to talk," says the goldrider who finally finds part of her spine. Her lips are still trembling but those dark eyes of hers have lifted to seek out K'del and his irritation full on. "You walk around like you want to ask questions or say something and I don't know what to say to you and- I hate fighting. I hate this. I hate being Weyrwoman. I hate that there is a Weyrwoman. I hate that Lujayn didn't think to train me while she was acting or that- I hate that you hate me." The last, irrational as it is, unleashes part of the floodgates at those blue eyes fill with unspilled tears. When in doubt about what issues to address and how to address them? Make it all about yourself! "I don't hate you, Io," says K'del, who is helpless in the face of those tears, and that statement. In a different fight, he might get up at this point and wrap his arms around her, and promise that everything is going to be fine; today, he's not quite ready to let go of it, though he's torn: that much is written across his face. "But I hate what you're doing to my Weyr. If you hate being Weyrwoman so much, quit, because all you're doing right now is making people unhappy." The tears don't spill, though they somehow stay static in her eyes, turning the blue coloring actually watery in their glossy wobble. Her lips however, and the shake of her body, stills as he suggests what she should do. Iolene's silent for those extended, overly long seconds. Then, quieter than the outpouring of what she hated just moments before, she questions: "Quit? Or what? Yo-..." But what she means to say is cut short by a hand to her lips and widened eyes. K'del evidently makes his own conclusion as to what she means in that cut-short answer. "What? No!" Not that he specifies what he means. Instead, he presses his palms flat upon the thick fabric of his trousers, and stares at her, his jaw set in a determined way. "You need to get Lujayn to train you. You need to hire Giorda back, or at least have her train whoever you pick as a replacement. And after that, you need to start talking to me before you start scaring the shit out of the Weyr with your outlandish new ideas. It's important, Io. It's... We have to work together. I'm sorry I didn't talk to you. I was... scared." "She had ever chance to start training me when Tiriana was sent away. She didn't. I don't see her changing her mind now that I outrank her by your system. And- and... I can't quit." Iolene falls back into her seat completely, from the half-stand she was at when K'del came home. "Everything about this is wrong and I've told you how I feel and you don't really want to hear it or talk about it. And I need to- I need to- it needs to be fixed somehow. And the less you're involved, if something goes wrong. If I can't do it, then you can at least continue to lead?" Somewhere, all this skewed logic makes some sense. "I'm not quitting and you can't go tell all those people I'm crazy, because I'm not. I'm not crazy. I'm not Tiriana." "No." It's thunderous - a sudden return to the anger of before, though at least this time it's tempered by frustration borne out of affection, and not just irritation. "It doesn't work like that. It's-- it's not our place to change things like that. It doesn't work. We hold the Weyr in trust for future leaders. We don't just waltz in and change the way it has worked for hundreds of years." It's his turn to stand up, to pace around the room with frenetic, frustrated energy. "You cannot do it, Iolene. I won't support-- I can't. Don't you see?" "What's a leader if not someone who looks out for the best of their people?" shoots back Iolene, those tears finally spilling, though not out of sadness or frustration. Maybe not even anger. Maybe those tears just have nowhere else to go and won't dry up on their own accord. The hand that swipes them away, however, is frustrated. "How can it not work like that? How can things always always stay the same? Forever? It's not like dragons really kn- it's..." Words stop and Io's eyes close, deep, slow breaths taken in and then out followed by a visible swallow. "Not every leader just holds the Weyr in trust for the future. We should be actively working to make things better. How can you not see that?" "By tearing apart the very fabric of our society? Change has to come slowly. You don't just... rip out everything and start over again, just because you don't like the way something works." It's probably a good thing they don't have any immediate neighbours, at present; K'del's voice is getting dangerously loud. "You don't get to just walk in and decide that you know better. If you do this, no one will ever trust Weyrwomen again. As it is, the rest of the Weyrs have stopped trusting us." Beat. "You cannot lead a Weyr by committee. You just can't." K'del's voice might be rising but Iolene's suddenly drops. It's filled with a resigned weariness. "As if they trusted me before." It's cruel, and he'll probably regret it later, and still, there it is: "And now they never will. You're proving them all - to their minds - right. You're showing them that exiles can't be trusted, that they don't understand our world and can't be allowed to impact it. All of those fucking people who look down on us for letting you Stand in the first place are now going to sit back, smug, and feel vindicated." "And you?" Iolene, still quiet, asks. K'del's silence speaks - rightly or wrongly - volumes, and it may or may not be ameliorated by what he does, finally, answer. "Think you could be an amazing Weyrwoman. I think-- you care, or you wouldn't be doing this. But I think you're wrong, and you just can't see it." It's not the right answer for Iolene and a thin choked little sound escapes from her throat. But she doesn't speak on the subject further. Instead, there's a capitulation of sorts, after a breath of quiet. "I'll reestablish the assistants to their positions until I find the right Headwoman. And I'll make sure Brieli and Azaylia get assigned weyrs." The silence that comes afterwards? It's ripe with the sentiment of a hanging question: is that all? It's not enough-- and it's obvious, so obvious, that K'del is torn between reaching out to comfort, and continuing the argument despite that capitulation. "Thank you," he says, finally, his tone rich with unexpressed things. It is all, but it's also not. "You can't do away with my position. You have no power over the wings, Iolene, and I will stand in front of anything you try and do. Please." She's not looking at him anymore, favoring the table with her blue-eyed stare and the pie splatters. Moving robotically, Iolene reaches for that fork and pulls the pie plate to her, digging into it for another bite, and then another, barely chewing before swallowing. "I won't change the wings. I promise. You're safe." Her promise doesn't really seem to make K'del any easier; if anything, really, he looks more worried. But he nods, even if she's not going to see it, and turns on his heel. "I'm going to go clean up," he says, before disappearing into the bedroom. If he chooses to hit a wall in frustration, this time? He's wise enough to wrap it in a towel, first, and muffle the sound behind the running water of his bath. Out at the table, with K'del's steps taking him to the bathroom, Iolene finally cries silent sobs that shake her body. The fork holding hand comes up to swipe the back of her wrist under her nose and then is smeared against the side of her pants. But she continues eating, making short work of a quarter of the pie. Eventually, once the tremble in her voice is steadied and she's stopped crying enough to speak: "I haven't changed anything yet other than the lower caverns. I don't... I just wanted to get ideas from people to see what they think would work better. I haven't... I haven't changed anything yet. I won't change anything without talking to you first." K'del is gone a long time, and there's no audible reply to what Io says. When he does come out again, though, he's in a clean shirt, with a red-scrubbed face that speaks to tears of his own - and the first thing he does? He puts his arms around her, as long as she doesn't pull away, and just holds. No words. By the time he does come back, another quarter of the pie is gone, systematically eaten in silence, and Iolene's actually mid-fork-to-mouth when those arms wrap around her from behind. Stiffened shoulders relax slowly, the longer the hold carries on, and it somehow triggers another flood of silent tears. "I'm sorry." Though there's no elaboration as to what she's sorry for. K'del leans down, pressing a kiss to the top of Iolene's head. "I'm sorry too," he says, in a low, quiet voice, one that holds no reminder of the anger of earlier. "I'm so sorry." But is anything really fixed? Is it actual peace or just the semblance of one? Did anything even really get discussed or decided? Right now, Iolene doesn't seem to care as long as those arms don't move away, protests sounding in one-syllable guttural notes whenever he shifts. Maybe tonight will have some sort of reconciliation, but in the morning, she won't be in the bed next to him, and on the table next to the empty pie plate will be a neat stack of papers, written in Iolene's careful script: an outline of the various ideas she's come up with with different inks used to indicate thoughts shared with her by others. The blue ink, which is footnoted as A'stel, is used the most. It may be a start, but it's not an end. K'del's all affection, tonight, and that stack of papers is something... but it won't take long for it to be obvious that his troubled mind is not especially soothed. For all intents and purposes, they're still at a stand-still. And so it goes. |
Comments
Comments on "Logs:Showdown"Azaylia (Dragonshy) left a comment on Wed, 25 Jul 2012 18:23:29 GMT.
Wooeewooeewoooo... Waah waah waah~
Round 1: Stalemate.
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