(no subject)

[tragic_mask]

Arriving at the Visitor's Center, Melpomene takes a look around.

"Well, this is it. In all its touristic glory. "

Comments

[mechanicalswans]

He shakes his head.

"She took it back," he says. "Her sisters may have encouraged her. I've always suspected they did. Their marriages were unhappy. Ours wasn't."

[tragic_mask]

"But... it could have become so," she says. "There's where resentment comes in. If she'd stayed, and the seed of leaving had been in her mind..."

She shrugs, a quick motion that succeeds in drawing her further into herself. "It's easy to say if this, then that, but you can't ever know if it'd ever have really been like that."

[mechanicalswans]

He walks in silence for a little while, turning that over and over in his mind.

"She could never have stayed," he admits eventually, quietly. "If only she and I had met--if her sisters and my brothers had not been involved--if I hadn't been in exile, it may have lasted longer. But never forever."

[tragic_mask]

"So many factors involved in everything we do."

[mechanicalswans]

"Unfortunately."

He lights a cigarette. "It's not very comforting to think that one could never have been happy."

[tragic_mask]

"Sometimes the most comforting thoughts aren't the most true, though," she says, watching him light it.

[mechanicalswans]

"We just have to make the best of what we have, then," he says, and takes a drag. "Whatever that may be."

[tragic_mask]

"That's the best philosophy to have, I think."

[mechanicalswans]

"...I hope it's good enough."

[tragic_mask]

"We won't know until it fails us, I suppose."

... and then she walks along, in silence.

[mechanicalswans]

His hand seeks hers as he walks beside her.

Just focusing on his cigarette, and trying not to think.

[tragic_mask]

She: thinking too much, probably, but not saying any of it out loud.

Sometimes silence is the best kind of sound.

[mechanicalswans]

Silence doesn't bother him.

At least, as long as it's not an awkward silence, which this doesn't seem to be, to him.

He offers her a cigarette, though.

[tragic_mask]

She accepts it gratefully, and asks, "Got a light, mister?" because she knows he always does.

[mechanicalswans]

"Of course, dearest," he says, taking a lighter from his pocket and obliging.

"It's a shame it's banned in so many restaurants."

[tragic_mask]

"Mm," she says, taking a puff. "Why, so we could eat and smoke at the same time? I rarely go out to eat, anyway..."

[mechanicalswans]

"But you eat like a model, liebchen," he says with a chuckle. "I eat like a farmboy. And I like to have a smoke while I do."

[tragic_mask]

"Well, I'm sorry I don't need to eat," she says. "But I'll be happy to smoke like a rebel with you, in the restaurants."

[mechanicalswans]

"We can just as well get takeout," he says. "I don't like to spend longer in public, at least back home, than I have to. So I usually eat at home."

[tragic_mask]

She thinks back.

"Didn't you say you lived above some sort of restaurant, and got take-out there? That seems the ideal."

[mechanicalswans]

"I do," he says, "and that's why. My mechanical woman doesn't eat, though she does cook--I cook also, but I don't enjoy it."

[tragic_mask]

"You know, there are certainly similarities between cooking and smithing," she says. "Both generally require heat to create a finished product, both involve taking one thing and shaping it into another..." She pauses.

"Though I admit the two crafts are quite different, in other ways."

[mechanicalswans]

"I like desserts I can set on fire," he says, "and grilling, of course. I do like to grill. I don't get to very often, living in an apartment, but sometimes, in the forge..."

He smiles.

[tragic_mask]

"I'm sure it's a thrilling experience."

[mechanicalswans]

"Well, if you're sacrificing animals anyway," he says with a light shrug, "and it is tiring work. A man can work up quite an appetite."