Logs:She Prefers the Company of Her Ego
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| RL Date: 24 May, 2015 |
| Who: Hattie, C'stian |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: The Weyrwoman and the Wingsecond have a discussion about the Jr. Weyrwoman. |
| Where: Sanctuary, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 17, Month 11, Turn 37 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Lilah/Mentions |
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Once a complete weyr, buried beneath the mudslide, this awkwardly-shaped
chamber has now been cleaned up and protected from the elements by a set
of proper doors where the ledge might have been. It's a cozy little spot,
all funny little shelves and nooks in the warmly-painted walls, various
ornaments sat in each space in the wall, from collections of tealights to
elaborate carvings.
A third of the cavern is occupied by a large, rectangular storage unit
fronted by glass to make a counter-top, behind which lie a series of
wooden shelves stacked with crockery and various bottles, a proper yet
small built-in oven and a short, stocky cupboard. A selection of cakes,
biscuits and pastries are usually available throughout the day, set out on
the countertop alongside a board detailing the variety of warm drinks
available. Small groupings of mismatching furniture sit scattered
throughout the remaining free space, lending the place a quaint, homely
air. Usually on-duty is Molly or Joy, kitchen girls known for their baking
skills. The evening finds the caverns a relatively rowdy place, compared to the quiet of the solarium and the Sanctuary, and this is one of the many reasons why Fort's Weyrwoman has bypassed visiting the former and has settled in the latter, where some of the only noise is one of the baker girls doing a last round of cleaning before the Sanctuary closes for the night. Hattie has tucked herself into one corner of the room, the table beside her supporting an empty plate and a recently refilled mug of tea, the open notebook beside them one that she's idly making notes in. Not that it looks like she's having much success, her pen stationary and eyes almost closed. The Hematite wingsecond seems to be seeking a quiet space as well; he, too, carries a book with him, and he too seems to be ignoring its presence. But where Hattie has settled in rather sedately, C'stian seems to be full of nervous energy. Once he enters the Sanctuary, he bypasses a chair and finds himself pacing from point to point in the room. Here to the storage cabinet, then to the oven, over towards the collection of little carvings, and back towards the countertop. C'stian's arrival provokes an obvious kind of tension in Hattie, and while she initially puts a lot of effort into /not/ watching him and attempting to seem more alert and focused, the more he fidgets, the more she can't pretend. Eventually, she's either irritated or just frustrated enough to half-demand, "Will you /stop that/?" before she tries to swallow down those feelings with a long drink of too hot tea. She darts a look to the girl, who is now the one of the lot of them to pretend she hears and sees nothing, and tells her, "Go get dinner, Joy. I'll lock up." Seconds pass, but then she's obeyed in that much. It seems the bronzerider hadn't even really consciously noticed the weyrwoman's presence; when she snaps, C'stian turns in surprise. "Oh! Sorry." He does, however, force himself to stop pacing and take a seat. He opens his notebook as if prepared to work on his own notes, but this lasts only perhaps two minutes. Then he's tapping the page, his thoughts somewhere else once again. Maybe, on another day, she'd be able to block it all out, but Hattie has no such luck this evening, and soon her attention is drawn to the tapping of that pen against the page, and only so many minutes go by before she swears, "For the love of Faranth, C'stian, I don't care who your father is: if you don't cut that out, you're not going to leave this room alive." She abruptly gets to her feet, a little too quickly, for she has to steady herself against the edge of the table, then she heads for the counter and begins searching through some of the drawers. "Might solve a few problems," C'stian answers a little dryly, though he closes his book again and puts it aside. He does not stir from his seat, though does watch Hattie. Just in case she actually /is/ looking for a knife, perhaps. "I don't know why I can't settle down. I guess it's this flight... Lilah's worried that there won't be any eggs. Again. I tried to tell her she shouldn't worry before she had to, but now she's got /me/ worrying." "Forgive me, but before the flight, she didn't seem terribly interested in giving Eliyaveith a fighting chance." Hattie murmurs that admittance low, no commentary in her tone but that which the words themselves form. "Then, I like to think that that was the self-pity talking and not her true hopes." From one of the lower, deeper drawers, she pulls a half-full pot of sweetener. "/You/ have little to be concerned about. If there's no clutch, it will be deemed Eliyaveith's fault. If you want to be useful, you should look to keeping Lilah calm, and so keep Eliyaveith as free from stress as possible." "My worries /are/ for Eliyaveith," C'stian answers, shaking his head once; the motion is short and sharp, as if Lilah herself is not really his concern. "She was always there for Liesanth, right after the hatching, when he was still injured and scared. And Lilah's right about one thing; if anything /does/ go wrong, it will crush her." He leans back in his chair, closing his eyes for a moment. "I /did/ try to calm Lilah -- I tried to talk her down, I've not let her see her doubts affect me -- but I can't help but wonder. She knows her dragon better than I do, after all. Are these just..." He frowns, trying to find the right words. "Just normal fears about it happening again, or is there something she's picking up on from Eliyaveith?" "This is her life, now," Hattie says flatly, though not without feeling. Another drawer yields a spoon, and she carts the pot back to her table, where she rather indelicately heaps sweetener into her tea. "Every time she rises. Every few turns, she'll have to go through this. If she clutches this time, it could be just as much a fluke as her /not/ clutching the first time." Just when it looks like there's going to be more sweetener than tea in that mug, she holds off and heads back towards the counter. "I think you know as well as I do that half of what comes out of Lilah's mouth is absolute rubbish, whether or not she realises how she's portraying her feelings. She needs looking after." The sudden exhalation of breath from the bronzerider might be an attempt to cover a laugh. "I've known Lilah longer than I have almost anyone at this Weyr," C'stian points out. "She's one of the only ones who knew me as Castian the little aspiring Healer, rather than Castian the Candidate or C'stian the bronzerider. And I can tell you that in all the time I've known her, she's /never/ wanted 'looking after'. In fact, she's very good at chasing away anyone who wants to help her, as you might've noticed." "And you don't think that's significant?" Hattie questions, just a little bit on the patronising side, or perhaps she's just having that much trouble believing the sum of C'stian's response can be genuine. "You think that, because she's good at alienating herself and making others angry, she doesn't deserve to have anyone looking out for her?" So speaks the hypocrite, though she's so serious of manner that that much appears to have bypassed her completely. Sweetener relocated, she returns to her table, but doesn't sit down. "No, I think that anyone who tries to look out for her is going to come away bloodied," C'stian mutters in answer, staring at the notebook beside his chair. Running a hand through his tangled curls, he ponders the question. "Deserves? I /do/ think she deserves someone to be there for her. I think /everyone/ does, weyrwoman. But I'm not sure she /wants/ anyone there for her. I almost think she takes a sort of perverse /pride/ in chasing everyone away!" "Then maybe I have to hope that the rider of the next dragon to catch Eliyaveith isn't so worried about getting a little bloodied," Hattie murmurs, trying to bury what disappointment she isn't able to suppress in a mouthful of tea. "It won't get easier if she clutches," she says over the rim of her mug. "Whether Eliyaveith will want you around, well... that'll be up to her. I suppose the best that I can expect is that the whole Weyr doesn't start going on about you and Lilah tearing strips off of each other in the galleries." "What would you have me do?" C'stian snaps finally, gesturing around the room as if looking for answers. "Just offer to be there for her? Oh, I've tried that in the past. Try to shout some sense into her? We've been down that road, too. Of course I'm going to try to be there for her, but she's made it pretty clear that I'm probably not the one she wants around. She'd prefer... I don't know. That Reaches rider. Or maybe her own sharding ego." He seems to collapse back into the chair, pinching the bridge of his nose. More quietly, he adds, "I'm not going to abandon her. But how do you help someone who refuses to be helped, weyrwoman?" The final question seems a genuine one, rather than rhetorical. Perhaps the young rider genuinely is looking for an answer. Hattie arches a brow as she downs a little more of her drink, then sets her mug down. "Which one?" she drawls, not truly a question, just about as thrilled to hear of foreign riders as C'stian seems to be. Even so, her dry not-enquiry sounds to signify 'which of the many?' rather than 'who?'. She shuffles back a step or two to lean against the wall, flipping her notebook closed on her way past the table. "Don't let yourself be scared off, or intimated, or humiliated into giving up," is all she has to offer, quiet-voiced, as she tips her head back and closes her eyes for a moment. "...If nothing else, you won't have your conscience to answer to, in the end." This earns a slightly amused snort in answer. "The bigger problem is likely my temper," C'stian admits finally. "Lilah's got a knack for goading me into snapping. What I /really/ need to learn to do is not stomp off when she does that. I don't like to let my temper go /on/ someone, so I tend to go off alone until I cool off. Getting me angry is the quickest way for her to end a conversation, and she clearly knows it." "Then she plainly has no qualms about manipulating you. Why shouldn't you play the same game?" Hattie cracks her eyes open enough to peer over at him for a moment or two, then resumes her wall-leaning, eyes shut. "Better yet, take a leaf from your father's book and shout right back. He and I spent our first few turns together having a good argument every other day. I don't think I'd have had any respect for him if he hadn't fought back." She shrugs and finally blinks her eyes wide to focus properly again. "I don't know which of us ever won, by the way," the Weyrwoman admits in a tone that's far more wry. "I keep finding he and I seem to have more in common than I thought," C'stian remarks, a hint of wry amusement creeping into his own tone now. "Maybe you're right, and I should embrace that. It'd probably surprise Lilah, at the least; I'm not sure she would know what to do if I actually /did/ shout back instead of just storming off." "I think that anything that would surprise her is worth investigating." Hattie pushes away from the wall to gather up her mug and empty plate, then ambles her way behind the counter and to the sink carved into the wall, where she deposits both. When she turns back, she plants her hands down on the counter and stares down at it for a second or two, then says, "She won't let me do it, at least not directly. I think you stand a better chance of being there for her. I have to be the bad guy." She gestures vaguely with one hand. "And that's... life. It better serves her purposes to believe I don't care." "I think she prefers to believe /no one/ cares, not truly," C'stian answers, almost a little sadly. "Or that if they do, it's for ulterior motives. Not for her. For politics, or for what Eliyaveith represents, or any of a dozen other reasons she can pull out of her pockets. But not her. Never for her." After a moment, he picks up his notebook again. Hattie is silent, just breathing slowly in and out, before she cracks a weary, bitter smile that she hides with the tilt of her head, her hair falling forward just enough to conceal her expression. "...It is a surprisingly easy belief to hold true to," she murmurs, something a little closer to pain than understanding there and gone in a flash. Clearing her throat, she straightens and makes a return to all practicality. "If you don't mind, I need to lock up." "Oh... right, sorry." Notebook in hand, C'stian gets up from his chair, with a nod to Hattie. "And I suppose you're right; it's easy to believe such things... especially when they start to become self-fulfilling." Shaking his head, he adds, "Thank you for the talk, weyrwoman." The murmur of sound that isn't actually a word must be acknowledgement, for it's the only response that Hattie provides, both answer and farewell in one. In this instance, locking up apparently involves not only shutting the Sanctuary down for the night, but locking herself /in/ once C'stian has departed. For a handful of seconds, she leans against the door, forehead resting there, and then she turns to reclaim her corner and the silence. |
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