kyriff | 001. every story is a song // open post.

[ It's not gracelessness. If anything, Cisco prefers that the few who can, call it as it is, rather than tiptoeing around her like she were the type to break.

( Nobody talks about the one they lost. Sometimes, she thinks, it makes it so much harder. )

Cisco pours herself a glass and just knocks back the drink. She lives upstairs, she can afford to get a little buzzed.

It was never her thing to look for the bottle, except that one time in 2025 when 108 had found her humming the quiet, somber strains of the Smith's "Asleep" while watching smoke tendrils ghost between the spaces of her fingers. ]

He, [ she runs a hand through her hair, a pinched look on her face. It's so easy to be honest with Rethe. Just as it is easy to be honest with Aidan. ] He already left.

Ah.

[And all he does, in the next moment, is reach out and cover her hand with his own.]

It's going to be okay.

[A lot of people say that, a lot of people mean it, but when words like that come from Rethe, they might as well be Gospel Truth. And it's because he wouldn't ever say it unless he was certain that it was going to happen.]

Talk to me?

[About anything, about everything, about nothing at all. She needed a human voice and a human ear, and he was quite happy to provide that for her.]

[ She turns her palm upwards and curls her fingers around Rethe's hand.

In the beginning, they hadn't spoken much. By the time she'd come along everyone was gearing up for the battle against Nyx and day after day and week after week it felt like that was all there was to it.

And then after? After there was the Breaking of the Veil, engagements both long and short, a life on the road if not always on call. It would have been perfect -- as perfect as a hunter's life can get, at least until the people you cared about died in a fight miles and miles away and grief crept in to make room for a kind of desperation. ]

I miss him when he's gone. [ A laugh escapes her, an edge of incredulity when she adds: ] I miss him when he's around.

[ News of Hikaru Shinta's death months before had been hard. She didn't think it would be, given that he'd died once before and come back.

But it's never easy. Never. ] We've been sleeping in separate rooms again. [ Her gaze falls to her drink, to the way the light from the bar plays over the amber liquid. ]

I think he just needs a little more time. You both do. [Adding that firmly.] Can I be honest with you?

[ Time. They have a lot of it now, and she understands that better than most. The last three years have been kind to them, good in a way that she'd never expected even with the expected hiccup each January and the loss that still feels too soon.

Cen is good to the twins, even asked them to call him "Dad" in that first year home; a thing she'd not allowed herself to think too hard on at first.

She wipes her fingers beneath her eyes and puts on a smile for Rethe. ] Always.

You leaving and him not stopping you meant that neither of you got to heal. This need for space is a part of that process.

[As is staying put and waiting for the gaps between them to close.]

[ She lets the words sink in, allows herself to take comfort that they come from Rethe, who would never say anything unless he was fairly sure that it was true. ]

Do you-- [ she presses an open palm to her forehead; takes a breath, centers her being. ] --does it ever really come easy?

Forgiveness.

It feels like a cop-out, when it does.

[He's quiet for a while, and it's clear from the look in his eyes that it's because a good part of him is elsewhere, far, far away from their moment together.

When he finally speaks, it's only after he's turned away, and brought out his cigarettes.]

It's only as easy as you make it, and even after you get to that point? [Click, drag, exhale.] It's a process. It never really stops.

[He was speaking from experience this time.]

[ Cisco hangs her head a little, looks up and straight at the bottles that line the back of the bar without really looking at them so much as past them. ]

He's been so good to the kids. [ The words are soft and she looks back down at her drink, teeth catching at her bottom lip. ]

[And he's watching her with a smile, and squeezing her hand.]

He loves them, just like he loves you.

[He wants everything he says and every little gesture he makes to be reassuring. He hopes that she's past the point of taking it.]

If he didn't care... well, neither of you would be in this position right now. Walking away is easy to do, after all.

That's true, [ there's a hitch between those two syllables, and she squeezes Rethe's hand back, her free one leaning an elbow on the counter, the fingers idly tracing her brow in a habit she'd picked up sometime between raising the children in backwater Thailand and coming home to Falner.

Her chest doesn't feel quite as tight now, and the room upstairs not so imposing in the fact that everything in it belongs to the man who'd left only hours before.

When she and Cen are okay, it feels like her home away from home.

When they aren't... well.

She clears her throat then and straightens, her hand drawing away from Rethe's so that she can hug herself, elbows planted on the bar as she glances briefly over her shoulder at DJ currently spinning at the booth.

When she comments next, it's not about Cen. She can let the issue lie for now. Rethe was always good company, and the last thing she wanted was to be the consistent wet blanket. ]

I have to plan a themed birthday party. [ She says it with the exasperated tones of a mother who has just been asked the near-impossible. ] They discovered the Doctor Who DVD collection 108 got me years ago.

[ Vintage. The shows from when she was in her twenties are vintage, now. ]

Maggie insists on being Amy. Renae is horrified at how she's declared that he can be Rory.

[And he welcomes the shift because he knows what she is trying to do. He'll accept it, for the moment.]

At least you're now certain that your children have good taste. [Smiling.] That's a bit hard to come by, you know.

[He liked kids. He wasn't ever going to have any of his own, so...]

Edited 2014-01-14 04:42 (UTC)

Well, Renae said yes on the one condition that there had to be a functional TARDIS.

[ She is resisting the urge to roll her eyes in amusement.

( Yes. Talk about the children. It was a good enough distraction to feelings she needed to process, the way she did, every.year since they came home. )

She chuckles, though. ]

And then proceeded to ask that since dragons and demons and people with powers like the X-Men existed, would it be entirely possible that Britain's best-kept secret was a man who didn't really die per se, and who travelled a with a quirky blue box.

[He's listening to all this with a quiet smile on his face. That smile that tells you that He Knows Something Few Others Know.

Funny, really, to see how influential Doctor Who was as a series. One had to wonder...]

I suppose it could be.

[Graceful, as ever.]

[ This is Cisco eyeing you, Rethe. Her This-One-Knows-Something senses are tingling--

--but all she gives is a smile, a mere quirk of the lips before she leans back against the rest of her seat. ]

Thank you. [ Quiet now, calmer. ]

[He only smiles at her, and gives her a kiss on the cheek and a pat to the shoulder.]

You know how to find me. I'll always be around, okay?

[ This is her arm catching him by the waist, and pulling him in for a hug that she dares to do because this is Rethe and sometimes it's necessary to be ballsy enough to invade his space. ]

Thank you, [ she says again before finally letting him go. ] And I will.

Edited 2014-02-09 19:58 (UTC)

[He welcomes that hug, even if it surprises him a little. It's... nice, knowing that he can help people out even in the smallest fashions, and receiving some affection in return.]

Now... will you let this boy buy a lady like yourself a drink?

[ A quiet nod. ] Why not.

Not every day a girl like me gets an offer like that from an angel.

001. every story is a song // open post.

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dear rethe, pls to remember that the whole of falner is pretty much like your nursery.

WELL YES, BUT.

NO BUTS. also orz so late. forever late.

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