(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

[tragic_mask]

"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?"

[mechanicalswans]

"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."

[tragic_mask]

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

[mechanicalswans]

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

[tragic_mask]

"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."

[mechanicalswans]

"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."

[tragic_mask]

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

[mechanicalswans]

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

[tragic_mask]

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

[mechanicalswans]

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

[tragic_mask]

"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."

[mechanicalswans]

"Something besides myself," he says. "It may sound simple, but there it is."

[tragic_mask]

"I feel that's a fairly easy thing to fulfill," she says. "As long as you're willing to not be alone, which you clearly are, at this juncture."

[mechanicalswans]

"But I need the right kind of company," he says. "Company that will not simply absorb or reflect. Company that will remain itself, distinct. That's where you come in."

[tragic_mask]

She smiles. "Yes, I could only ever be with someone who acknowledges my uniqueness, my independence."

[mechanicalswans]

"And you," he says. "What is it that you lack, on our journey?"

[tragic_mask]

"A reminder that I'm not alone," she says, not looking at him now, but rather at the cracks in the sidewalk. "That... I have significance, in some way, in more than just the written word."

[mechanicalswans]

"So there we are," he says softly. "The things we are missing fit together nicely. Unstoppable, as I said..."

[tragic_mask]

"Yes."

She finds this a good moment to slip her hand into his, as they walk. It feels right.

[mechanicalswans]

He squeezes her hand, gently.

There doesn't seem to be anything else for him to say--nothing that needs to be said. Just enjoying the silence and her company, as they walk along.

[tragic_mask]

It's a good silence.

After not too long, they reach the parking lot of the hotel, crunching bits of gravel under their feet.

[mechanicalswans]

He chuckles quietly as he looks up at the hotel.

"How are we handling our trip home, then? Driving back? Bothering to check out?"

[tragic_mask]

"Not like we brought much... still, we should probably check out. Unless you want the manager to think we were ghosts." She grins.

[mechanicalswans]

"...you know, that is an appealing idea," he says. "I don't quite feel up to paperwork today. Let's be ghosts."

[tragic_mask]

"All right," she says. "Then we'll have to make a run for it."