driftfleet | it's a mingle, a paisley mingle

"All right." He followed her and sat once she did, relieved that she let him have the seat where his back would feel safer. Very thoughtful of her in regards to his deeply ingrained paranoias.

He hadn't really noticed the avoidance of windows yet, though it would eventually add up to something at the back of his mind.

"What have you?"

Rogue opened the book to the correct page. Her nerves hadn't left her, but she was determined to see this through. "It's called A Valediction Forbidding Mourning."

Quietly, aware that she hadn't really done this since he was blinded and that had been out of necessity rather than her ceding to his often mentioned tease of her reading to him, Rogue began to read:

"As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun."

Loki settled back to listen as she read. To him, too, it brought to mind those days when she'd read to him, when he couldn't read for himself. (A few others had read to him as well, in those days, but it wasn't quite the same. Rogue held a unique place in his life.)

There was a good deal of meaning to that poem, the geometry within it something that immediately caught his attention and held it. Eyes half-closed, hands loosely clasped over his stomach, he was silent for a bit after Rogue finished reading, rolling the words about in his mind. "Circumstances do change," he agreed. "But there are universal constants yet."

The pause between when she finished and when he spoke was a little nerve-wrecking, wondering at his opinion of everything from the poem itself to the message it contained. When he finally spoke, it didn't answer any of her questions, but it did provide her with an opening to continue with what she wanted to stay.

"The thing is," she shifted back and forth in her hair. "I know it's gonna sound silly because I know how much ya thrive on chaos, but with the way things have been between us these past two years, I feel like you're the steady half of the compass. Time keeps changin' for me, an' I adapt an' move when you're not here -- but then you come back, an' you remember. And it's like -- clickin' a puzzle piece back together. It pulls me right back so it doesn't really matter what else happened while ya were gone."

Hesistent, she extended her hand to him, "'Makes me end where I begun.'"

He reached to take her hand, smoothing his thumb over her knuckles. "'tis curious indeed," he said. "For I think of you as my steady center. My... unfailing heart." The emotional constant of his life had come to be her, the one person he could rely upon in all the realms after he had so foolishly lost his mother.

That was... something to hear. She had no idea how to deal with something like that in the face of all his comings and goings. She wished that his words would hang in the air, suspended like an ornament so she could view them from all sides, poke and prod them in the shadow and the light.

"...I know that it can't be easy for ya, comin' an' goin' like this with me still -- havin' time. It's not easy for me either. But I think it's still worth it, even though it's hard."

He smiled crookedly. "And here, I thought that I had the easy end of it." For all the emotional traps he might face upon returning, he did not have to experience that missing time. Rogue was far more faithful than he really thought he had the capacity to be in such a situation. "But yes, I think it well worth it, too."

Well, she'd said it. She did feel a little better for saying it, because it was both true and real, and now it wouldn't be hovering in the realm of uncertainty or regret. But it didn't make the gap she felt between them any smaller. And Rogue wasn't sure how to fix that. Her natural response to being hurt was to withdraw or to fight, and it had hurt each time he'd went away. She hadn't thought of herself as putting up walls between them, but sometimes things just didn't feel as free and easy between them as she remembered. Memories tended to get rose-tainted, true, but she didn't know what to say or do now. She felt awkward and Rogue ducked her head, attempted a tease. "Well... good. Hate ta think you'd be hangin' around for nothin'."

He laughed, squeezing her hand. "I've something precious to keep me about." More precious than gold, and all of the secrets he'd clutched to himself. To be loved; what a thing that was, and he still found it strange at times. Stranger still, to love someone else. "And you tell me the funniest jokes, with your made-up words," he teased.

"Better'n makin' random things plural just 'cause I feel like it," she said, smiling at him a little. She liked hearing his laugh.

So this was it, huh? Her big emotional gambit and he made old jokes because they hadn't made any new ones, and he was fine with that because no time had passed for him, but it had for her, and she wanted to try to make things right -- she had tried, in bringing this up... but maybe the gap would just always be there, and she didn't know how to say it any better. She was sure he'd try to bridge it if he knew how she'd felt.

...hadn't she told him, though? Maybe this was his way of trying to bridge it. Maybe they just needed more time.

He watched her curiously for a moment, considering. It felt as if there was something she wanted from him, some point she'd wanted to make beyond what he'd discovered. Odd. He was normally better at reading her than that, though perhaps that was one of those experiential gap things.

Well, in the past, it had worked to be frank, as loath as he was to do so at times. So he smiled at the joke--it was well worth smiling at--then said, "I do not know what more you would have me say, dearest, though I would give it to you if I did."

Ah. That. Well. That.

She looked at him and then glanced away. It hurt a little, because... how did she even say this? How did she bring this out without hurting him? Quietly: "...ya know I meant it when I said that ya kept me comin' back to you. But I can only come back because I've had ta go an' change... and I don't know if ya see that. And that scares me."

Was he with her because it was a habit? Or was he with her? Did he still want to know her, down to finding out the parts of her that were different? Was he interested, which felt insane considering he... well, he was there, holding her hand. But that didn't change the way she felt.

Loki kept hold of her hand as he considered these words. He could try to give her an answer he thought she wanted to hear, or could be honest. Well, he still maintained his oath to be honest to her.

"I know you have lived when I haven't been there, and had new experiences." But that wasn't necessarily that different from other times when they'd been separated. They lived together, not within each other. "I cannot know what that feels like for you, from the inside. But as I am a keen observer of you... what I have seen of you as the lady I love is not so vastly changed from who I have known."

Would she be angry he didn't see her as vastly different? If she were vastly different, his feelings necessarily would be, too.

Rogue was silent for a time, remembering the first time they'd been torn apart. He'd returned home; a year had passed for him, seven days for her. He'd been imprisoned during that time, his mother had died... she still remembered how it felt when she'd first seen that new scar on his chest and feared the worst.

He hadn't kept anything back from her, could she say the same? He'd been the same man, but there had been ways he'd changed too -- sharper curves, harder edges, and so much more pain...

"I ain't saying I'm a completely different person..." She sighed quietly and asked, "How did it feel for you? When ya came back from Asgard that first time?"

He considered this, reviewing his memory of that time. "I do not think I had changed, over much. But when one lives with oneself day to do and change is incremental, it might not be so visible." It wasn't like when he'd fallen through the black hole. He hadn't felt like a different person crawling from the wreckage. All there'd been was his grief for Frigga, but... he'd told Rogue of that.

And had that made him so different as a person? He didn't feel it to be so. His feelings toward her hadn't changed, which seemed the most important part. "The greatest change I experienced in that time was with how I related to my brother," he offered.

So had her time changed how she might relate to him? Possible. How had he not noticed something like that.

She was quiet again, considering. How could it be that he hadn't felt any different? Was there something wrong with her, that she didn't feel the same?

(Or maybe it was something to do with him being so old - what was a year to someone over one thousand? Maybe it had to do with first times and first loves and the constant, grinding down of helplessness, how there was nothing she could do to bring him back, how losing him had nothing to do with either of them and she hated being so helpless.)

She wasn't sure what else to say, having already opened up far more than was normally comfortable. "Okay," she said. She didn't let go of his hand. She hesitated and continued, "Where I feel I've changed most is... well, isn't so much a change, maybe, as an awareness."

More quietly, "D'ya have any idea how much I missed you?"

"Awareness," he echoed, with a slight nod. "Awareness comes with experience. And you have experienced much when I have been gone." But that wasn't something that would be evident to him necessarily; it was something that affected how she viewed the world, but would only touch how she interacted with it in subtle ways. He didn't know what it was like to be in her skin.

"I can guess," he said. "But I cannot know. I do not live in your skin."

it's a mingle, a paisley mingle

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