Logs:How Should We Know
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| RL Date: 7 June, 2011 |
| Who: Jaques, Iolene |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: In the midst of her own grief, Iolene tries to comfort Jaques. She misses smiling. |
| Where: Bathing Pools, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 20, Month 12, Turn 25 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Tomaeran/Mentions |
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| It is a winter night, 20:07 of day 20, month 12, turn 25 of Interval 10. It's taken three days for someone to take Iolene to the baths; the stench probably getting to people more than any kindly sort of gesture. Her escort waits just outside the baths, two burly stablehands posing as guards, while she's sunk into one of the various bathing pools. It /is/ everything Tom's said and more, and that zoned out expression is either one of serene bliss or a continuation of her utterly blank state. Where Iolene's gaze is blank, there's something too-present in Jaques' eyes, his face hagged and unshaven as a couple of guardsmen show another small group to the baths. There's much gaping about, faces alight with wonder or fear at the strange warm pools sending up their steam. But for Jaques, what stands out is one familiar dirty blonde head, and he heads over toward Iolene's pool, to sit the bench by it instead of joining her. Where once Iolene might have flushed with being this naked (water not counting as a cover up) in front of the opposite gender, she barely seems to register Jaques' approach. Barely. A flicker of lashes turns her gaze sidelong then turns away, but returns again. A voice so rarely used in the last few days rouses itself to say, hoarsely, "Hey." She'll even try to smile again, but it fails, again. "Hey," echoes Jaques; in answer to hers, his mouth twitches at a corner, but the smile is sad at best. The other exiles are slowly trying out the hot water in the pools, and one of them is being unduly fascinated by the soap, but by and large they give both Jaques and Iolene their space. "Looks warm," Jaques observes, terrible at small-talk. But the silence seems to be unnerving even him, the moreso for it being Iolene. "Tom said it was," which is as much confirmation as Jaques will get about the steaming water. Iolene sinks in a little further, submerging her shoulders so her chin skims the water's surface. She turns to face Jaques more completely, and rises just enough so that her chin might find the stone's ledge. Owlish, dark eyes look to Jaques, unblinking and steadfast, and a slow exhale precedes her next words, effort made: "Have you eaten yet? Tom says the food is good. It isn't fish." The thought of food makes Jaques wrinkle his nose, and he lifts his bony shoulders, the weight loss of their displacement as visible in him as in many of the others. "I can't keep it down if I try," he answers, with a vague gesture. "Though truth be told, I don't care much to try just now. You? You--should." "Don't want to." Iolene says, then stops short. This does make her smile weakly. "I think I've regressed," she confesses, the hoarseness of her voice smoothing out with practice. "Gr-," a swallow and a sharp breath stops the appellation short. Then, "Grams would box my ears if she saw me." It makes Jaques smile, too, and small and quiet though it may be, it's genuine. "Am I going to have to do it for her?" he wonders. 'It's the steam,' is what she would protest, if she were in a protesting frame of mind, but there are the telltale signs of the imminent danger of tears that don't fall. Instead, Iolene tries to smile again. "It wouldn't be the same. You're not as scary for one." A bare arm stretches forth so her hand might curl about the air in the generaly direction of Jaques. "How are you? Have you done something where you need me to box your ears?" "No. I'm not," Jaques agrees. It's enough to wipe the smile away, and a beat later, he glances awawy entirely. "Not on purpose." With Jaques' smile disappearing, so too does Iolene's effort. Spent, the stretched out arm falls and she drapes herself over the stone wall of the bath, using it to keep herself propped up wearily. "Do you want to know something?" Jaques cuts his eyes back to glance at Iolene, though he doesn't turn his head. He's listening, at any rate. Those dark blue eyes close, her glistening lashes pressed long against her cheek. "Once, when I was five, I told my grams I would marry you." This, /this/, brings a reflexive and wistful smile to her lips. "You were so nice to sit with. So quiet. You gave me hugs and told me it would be ok after-," the gentle voice trails off as there are things that just don't need to be said in regards to the painful death of her parents. "Jaques?" The lilt of a question precedes the opening of her eyes once more, making sure he's still there. "Io." Jaques is quiet now, as much so as he was then. He doesn't say anything else for a long moment. Then, "Do you know, one of them said unthinking, 'Don't you know not to take her between like that?'" Quietly, Iolene's voice lifts above the steam, "Between?" "The nothing," Jaques explains, with a shrug. "The nothing between the worlds, they said." "What does-," her question stops before it completes, the pieces falling into place as she extrapolates her own meaning which may not be far from the truth. "Oh." For the first time since arriving, a thread of anger hints in her words, made raspy for the illness she suffers and the disuse of her voice, "How would we know?" Jaques echoes, "How would we know." He shrugs, though, and glances away again, though it doesn't hide the emotion in his thinned face. "It's done, is all," he decides at length. "We can't go back." Her anger recedes. Repeated, "It's done," is then twisted and regurgitated, "It's all done." Iolene turns and sinks back into the water, her back to her fellow exile. "It'll be ok," she offers his words of comfort back to him, from so many years ago. "We'll make a new life." Blindly reaching, Iolene finds her towel and rises out of the water to wrap it around her thin body. "Jaques," she again calls, but doesn't wait for any kind of response, whether verbal or mere acknowledgement. "It'll be all right." She sloshes out of the pool and comes by him on the bench. "It'll be all right." "I know," says Jaques, glancing up at Iolene as she comes to join him. He reaches out one hand to wrap around her, much as they've done in years past. "I know. But was that ever a comfort, now?" Towel-wrapped, Iolene dismisses his one hand wrap to envelope him in both with a hug. "It'll be all right," she says for a third time. "I promise. I never break a promise. Are you going to take a bath or walk back with me?" Jaques hesitates, glancing from water to girl and back again. He reaches up to scratch his stubbly chin, then shrugs. "I'm not so filthy I can't do without. Besides, the steam and the heat feels better than anything else I can imagine," he notes, and musters a faint quirk of the mouth again as he looks down at her. "I think I'd forgotten what being warm was like, or maybe we never really knew." "We never really knew. We never really knew a lot of things," says Iolene, the latter a little more soberly. Tucking her hand about his arm, she nudges him up, "Walk me back and I'll go find Evie if you go find my grandfather. He hasn't been look well lately." Jaques, getting to his feet, releases a puff of breath and nods. "All right," he agrees, as they set off toward the doors. One of the guards falls in step just behind, the better to show them the way; Jaques tenses slightly but doesn't look. Instead, arm in arm with Iolene, he leans closer to her ear to note, "She won't talk to me." "It's ok," Iolene spares, "I'll talk to her." While Jaques gets tense, Io doesn't even notice the guards, tuning them out as white noise in the chaos of her new life. And they walk, and walk, and are guided back to their living quarters where Iolene finds a screen to change behind into some new clothes. They fit marginally better than her old clothes. |
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