Work Text:
He stares at the ceiling of the Old Tolly Estate numbly.
Laris will know. You are not the only one who can get into a Noble house.
He hasn’t slept nearly enough. He can feel the toll it’s taking on his body, knows he will be achy and sluggish come sunrise. He couldn’t sleep, though. Not with all the anxieties and possibles running rampant through his mind. He tries to rationalise, no, no, he would barely allow me to work there with scrubbed skin and fine silks, surely, surely he would never associate with them, not for anything, not for the end of the world.
He shuts his eyes and sees himself whipped bloody and hung from the rafters. He opens his eyes. He hears this is what shall pass and tries to breathe quietly enough to not wake the others. On the bed just across from his, he hears rustling, and inhales sharply to keep the seemingly ever-present tears at bay. He risks turning his head, and watches as Akeeva slowly and carefully extracts herself from the tangle of bedsheets and limbs, so as to not wake the children.
She pauses momentarily, staring at the twins, making sure they’re asleep. He can tell just from looking at her that she has slept not much better than him. He thinks he can figure out why, as she steps feather-light out the door. He waits a moment, watches the twins in bed as one of them begins to move around, and realises Akeeva had not been quite careful enough.
“Donnie,” He murmurs, to not wake the others resting. The boy’s head whips over to him, far too alert already, and Marlo barely gestures his head towards the door before the boy is up out of the bed. His sister curls in on herself to preserve warmth. Marlo sighs, drags himself upwards, every joint and muscle aching in protest, and murmurs to Donnie, go check on Akeeva, quietly, as he shuffles to readjust the blankets over Debbie. He’s back in bed almost immediately, settling right back as he was, supine, palms rested on his chest, idly spinning the golden ring on his finger.
Laris will know. Know what? That he is dawdling on his mission, that he took a break from travelling to collect coin? Know who he is and who he works for? He couldn’t care less about what that man thinks of him, what that man knows of him. But the way that he’d said it, like he knew something Marlo didn’t…
There’s a moment he wonders if they did not mean the Head of House Laris. He dreads the implications. Then, Donnie returns, a weary tiefling in tow, and he makes eye-contact with her. He knows that look, saw it in the mirror day upon day for years, and moves over on his cot to make room for her to lay shoulder-to-shoulder with him. She accepts, gracelessly falling, exhaustion weighing them both down like lead.
Donnie ends up with Aenon, who had woken when the little chaos incarnate re-entered the room. Marlo doesn’t care much, as the pair leave the room to go spar, he turns his head to Akeeva. He tries to relay the question wordlessly, and when she meets his eye, she sighs.
“I… apologized to Kyar.” is the whispered confession. Marlo feels a weight on his chest, between hurt and bone-deep understanding. “We came to an agreement. I made an oath.”
He can tell by her tone she is not referring to her oaths as a paladin. He nods, gently, and says “I understand.”, and knows she can see the weight behind that statement. She does not call him on it. “I get it.” He adds, in a whisper, like it is not meant for anyone but him. He knows what it means, caring for someone in this way again, not as he does his beloved other but as he did his brothers, he knows how this will end. It is a fact, as immovable a paladin’s oaths. He knows that if the Knives are a true threat to his Love, he will need her and Aenon’s skills. He tells himself that is why he allows her to lay side-by-side in silent, sombre understanding.
He has never been the best liar.