tragic_mask | (no subject)

"I don't think that's necessary," she says. "But you're right. Give it time, and every story is a tragedy. That's why fairy tales end with 'happily ever after,' because they don't want to follow the story that far."

"So the muse and the smith go on their quest to find the sword of legend, and then... they find it, and return home," he says with a small smile. "It sounds wonderful."

"You make it sound like the back cover of one of those fantasy novels with girls in bikini armor on the front," she grumbles. "I'm hoping it doesn't turn out like that."

"Though I could make you something like that if you really wanted to--I do those commissions now and then, you know--no, that will not be our idiom."

"Good," she says, with a raised brow. "You know, I'd really not commission you to do that-- or anything you wouldn't want to. But specifically not that. I refuse to be one of those heroines."

He chuckles quietly.

"I made something like that for Scarlet," he says. "To look like flames--and she wears it, sometimes. Not often, though. And though I could make it so it would be comfortable, and wearable, that much metal would not suit you."

"No," she says. "I can't seem to broaden my fabric horizons away from cotton and silk. And leather."

"Just not polyester," he says. "You'll need woolens for your trips to the cold north..."

She makes a face.

"Guess I will."

"Oh, you'll learn to love it," he says cheerily. "Or at least tolerate it. Unless you're allergic."

"To the cold? I don't think so. But I suppose we'll find out, won't we?"

"To wool," he says, "though I suppose it's possible to be allergic to the cold. And we will certainly find out. You may want to pack a suitcase before we go."

"Oooor," she says, "I could go there with absolutely nothing at all, rebelling against the whole idea of well-packed suitcases and planned trips altogether."

She thinks about it. "I'd probably regret it later. This is what meticulous people like you are for, you know."

"Well... if you have comfortable shoes, swimsuits, cold and warm weather clothing you prefer. Anything you may need, to be gone for a while. I travel light, but I still prefer to have some things with me. Just in case."

"When we're there," she says, "I take it we'll be dropping the stories, the façades, as we discussed. Or is that for another time?"

"We will not be going around flaunting what we are," he says, "not among people, anyway. But we'd have no particular need of a story."

"I'm no good at them, anyway," she says, wryly.

"You inspire me, or I'd be no good at them either," he says with a quiet chuckle.

"Is it really me?" she asks. "I feel that the stories I inspire would be much more filled with strife, and much less... ordinary. You'd be cheating on me with your secretary-- if you had a secretary-- and this trip would have been a sad attempt to re-find the fire that lit our marriage when it first began."

She shrugs. "For example. I mean, there's nothing tragic at all about the story we've fabricated. Which, I don't mind telling you, is fine."

"There's normally--"

He stops, trying to think of the words.

"Normally a sense of sadness, of something missing, I suppose? I have it naturally, or so I'm told, and I wanted a vacation from that. The illusion of fulfillment, a fiction of ordinary happiness, seemed to be the best way around that. For both of us."

"Yes," she says gravely. "I'm told I have the air about me, as well."

"That's why we are so perfect together," he says. "I think we have less of it this way."

"Two wrongs make a right?" she says, paraphrasing an idiom. "Seems mathematically impossible."

"That would depend on what exactly each of us is missing."

"And what are you missing?" she asks, looking up at him. "Besides a heart, I mean. That's already been taken by the Tin Man."