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Night fell on New Delsta. Throné looked out on the city from her usual vantage, taking in the sights as the hustle and bustle slowed, sunlight fading into dusk, then to night. Her friends had reconvened briefly after the performance, only to then agree to take a little time to rest alone before gathering in earnest on the morrow.
She sighed a momentary sigh of contentment. Knowing the world continued turning -- and that warm reminder that she had played her part in it -- stirred a feeling she hadn't yet identified. She sat with it for a moment, elbows resting on the balcony, as street sounds gave way to quiet.
... and then as quiet gave way to a distinctly wet, high-pitched sound in the alleyway beneath her. It might better be termed two sets of sounds, she realized as she drew closer -- one a mix of dull thuds and wet splashes, the other equal parts agonized groan and desperate gasp.
Ah, New Delsta. It never changes, Throné thought to herself. She gave the alley a momentary glance before returning her gaze to the stars in the sky, paying no mind to the staggering blur of blue, white, and yellow..
The gearworks turned in her mind, though; a few moments later, she put together exactly what that combination of colors in that order implied. In seconds, she'd slid down the ladder, slipping down the alleyway in pursuit.
It didn't take her long, of course; within moments she'd placed her shoulders under the arm of a certain blonde with puffy, glassy eyes. "... How unlike you," she murmured. "You usually pace yourself, and even when you're a few cups in you're pretty giggly..."
Breathing in slowly, Castti screwed her eyes shut. "Throné...? When'd you get here?" Evidently, she needed a little time to process the comments, given the circumstances.
"Just now," Throné answered, trying to keep the faint exasperation out of her voice. "I don't suppose you have something to sober yourself up. ... I've never known you to drink this much."
Castti, still glassy-eyed, gave Throné an awkward smile. "I usually don't... uhh... drink when I'm pre... preocc..." Her tongue groped around in her mouth as if she might find the rest of the syllables in 'preoccupied' somewhere in there, and instead mostly found the rush of saliva that came immediately before --
"hold my hair" she requested with some urgency, before listing forward and giving Throné a lovely bird's-eye view of Cropdale-style beef stew.
(There was something quite familiar, of course, about a blonde woman overindulging and needing Throné to attend to her posthaste. ... Not that Throné was fully conscious of why there was the strange tinge of familiarity and even warmth to the moment.)
Helping Castti back up to a full standing position, Throné breathed out a small sigh. "... Let's get you to the inn."
//////
After thirty seconds with a mortar and pestle, one more round (in a toilet this time, thank Heaven for small mercies), and ten more minutes later, Castti finally found her verbal footing and, at the very least, something more like her usual grace and poise. "Thank you, Throné," she offered, breaking the awkward silence of the moment.
Skipping past the pleasantries, Throné -- seated in a chair across from Castti's inn room bed -- pressed the issue instead. "I'm still interested in the answer to my question."
Castti's face flushed, and she brought a hand up to it to hide her embarrassment. "Ah... if you'd be kind enough to repeat it...?"
"I've never seen you drink this much. I guess I want to know why."
Sliding up slightly on the bed and starting to pull up into a seated position, Castti moved that hand from in front of her face to behind her neck. "That's... I usually don't drink when I'm preoccupied, and when I do, I take a moment when I pay for each drink to assess how much I've had." She stared up at the ceiling. "After Agnea's performance, the other patrons were quite happy to buy me drinks, and I was thinking about something, so I lost track..."
Throné stared at Castti with a flat expression. "'Preoccupied,' is it." She leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees, one fist in the other hand, and then her chin in turn on top of those hands. "If you don't say what you were preoccupied with, I'll have to assume it was the red wine and beef stew having a disagreement in your stomach, and then I won't be able to eat either of them until I forget tonight ever happened."
Castti sighed. "... It's... Trousseau. And that scrivener woman. Partitio... Or, well -- one, then the other... or all of them at once? It's really nothing you need to be concerned about, though."
Throné didn't say anything; she let her utterly unchanged physical position (still leaning forward, still staring at Castti as if expecting an answer) do the work for her.
Castti pursed her lips. "I've seen you look at pockets like that. Do you think you're going to steal the rest of the answer from me?"
"Wouldn't be the first time."
Castti sighed. "... Point taken. It's... this was easier to turn my mind from when we were rushing from flame to flame, or when Ochette and Partitio were around." She looked off to the side, not quite able to meet the intensity of Throné's gaze. "When we were headed back from the Fellsun Ruins I overheard Osvald and Partitio talking about how that scrivener girl -- survived. Because she found something else to believe in. Him."
"Right." Throné thought about pushing the story toward its conclusion, but... looking at Castti stayed her tongue, at least for the moment.
"I thought I saw her at the theater, but I didn't think to chase her down and ask her about anything... by the time I was aware of what I wanted to ask, I was already at dinner." Castti's hand traced a circular pattern on the bedsheets without much enthusiasm. "And I started thinking about Trousseau, and how not only could I not reach him... there was a moment -- out in the forest, with Ochette -- where I started wondering if he was right after all. And then I -- I began feeling like I could never match up to Partitio, or Agnea -- we know so many people who don't need to fumble around with leaves and berries to save people they've only met once or twice. Even though Trousseau was..." Her voice hitched, and she stopped for a moment before trying again. "... I almost let Vide into my heart. Sometimes I wonder if I should be -- mad at Ochette for dragging me back to my senses, instead of..." Castti trailed off, the hand that had been tracing patterns on the sheets now tracing a similar one along the skin of her forearm -- along a faint scar, still ugly and blackish-purple along its edges.
Throné sat there, letting Castti trail off into silence. For a time, she just sat there with her; silence and problem-solving had long been allies for the thief. Her awareness slowly shrank down, down -- until it felt like the entire world fell away, like even the room didn't exist. Throné let that carry her along, looking at the apothecary and the darkness that yet clung to her -- tracing its shape, its grip, looking for that singular point to --
"So?"
-- strike.
Castti looked at Throné, startled and sobered all at once. "Huh?"
"Do you remember the dog?"
Castti smiled, in spite of the heavy atmosphere. "Of course... that's how we met."
"You only ever saw that dog once. You saved its life. I don't think Agnea would have run a whole group of men off with an axe over a dog -- and even if she would have, she didn't. You did. You've probably held more people's insides in than I've taken people's insides out."
Castti opened and closed her mouth with the grace and splendor of a beached fish.
"So what's this really about?"
Castti slowly drew her knees up, bringing her arms around her and hugging them. "... I miss him. Even after I told him I knew he'd given his heart over to the darkness entirely. I put an axe through every one of his ribs and I miss him more every time I think about that. I don't have the right to miss him. I hate him for everything he did and I still miss him."
Throné opened her mouth to speak, but Castti didn't notice; she'd only stopped to breathe, not because she was out of words.
"Sometimes I think I took advantage of him. He was always the gentlest and the most enthusiastic member of Eir's Apothecaries... he'd never give up on anyone, even the sickest patients. I keep asking myself -- did I just... use him until he broke? Would he have been better off if I'd forced him to rest, if I took more of those patients on myself instead --"
"Stop." Throné had, evidently, heard enough. "I get it. And I think..." She paused, looking for a way to say what she was feeling. "... you're pretty arrogant."
Yet again, Castti found herself whipped from 'rambling' to 'speechless' in an instant.
"You're so used to saving people that you take all of the successes as a given, and then you turn around and see anyone else do a thousandth of what you do and you act like you've watched a caveman start his first fire." She felt a little coldness creeping into her voice, and tried -- with mixed success -- to stop it. "Putting aside the times when you've taken one look at someone and known there was nothing you could do, how many patients have you lost? I'll even be nice and let you count Trousseau."
Castti volunteered the answer without even thinking -- so disoriented by being snapped out of her self-castigation that it came automatically. "... If we're only counting the times I wondered about a diagnostic error..." Castti paused. "... a few dozen?"
"And how many patients have you seen?" She paused, before adding, "I'm forcing you to count everyone in Timberain. You won't get away from me."
"My memories aren't exactly perfect, even now, but I'd estimate... several thousand, even before we count the inauguration..."
Throné buried her face in her dumb little hands, letting out an open-mouthed, high-pitch wheeze of exasperation. "I was going to call you a perfectionist but I think I have to ask if you think you're Dohter the Charitable instead."
Castti let go of her knees, relaxing her posture. "...The point is taken," she conceded, cheeks flushing from more than just the alcohol. "Do you think I should... change? Stop holding myself to such a standard?"
This time, it was Throné who struggled to find the words. "... I think you're just as far gone as Trousseau was, just in the other direction." She laughed with only a tiny bit of mirth; Castti didn't.
"I -- don't know what to say to that."
"I don't know how to follow it up, so it looks like we're in the same boat." She took a few seconds to think. "... Did you love him?"
"Romantically?" Castti blinked. "It's..." She held her arm with her other hand, tracing that scar again. "... I -- thought about it, for a long time. I didn't think it'd be appropriate while we were working together, and I'm usually not interested in men... but if he'd asked I probably would have at least considered it. I was -- actually more attracted to another apothecary, on top of that, but she was reserved about her affections herself..."
A chortle escaped Throné's throat before she could squish it down.
"I don't see what's funny about my answer," Castti fired off, sounding more huffy than genuinely offput; she reached behind herself, taking the pillow and hugging it to her chest.
Throné rubbed at her temple. "You really love almost everyone you meet that isn't acting like a monster in human skin, don't you? It's..."
"Is it naive this time? Or are we back at arrogant?" Castti asked, expecting another round of chastisement once Throné stopped trailing off.
"... cute," came Throné's answer. "Almost twee. I take back what I said at Mother's Garden. I can't imagine you as a mother anymore. You're like a lovesick teenager but about the entire world. Do you have any poetry the rest of us can read?"
Throné ducked the pillow Castti immediately threw at her; then the giggling started.
Then the giggling found its way to Castti.
As it died back down, Castti awkwardly mumbled, "... It's not the entire world... It's not as though I don't have preferences just because I like people, you know..." The flush returned.
"And just what are these mystery preferences? I'm listening."
Castti turned a little redder. "Well... someone attentive to detail," she started. "Someone who's got a firm grip on their heart when things feel dark, but who I get to fuss over a little most of the time." Awkwardly, she conceded, "... I think what I liked about Trousseau is that he was easy to fuss over."
"That sounds like you," Throné agreed.
"I wasn't finished."
"Then finish."
"Someone who can solve a problem without overcomplicating it... Someone strong enough to open paths but careful enough not to treat every obstacle as something that needs to be cut open." She looked at Throné for a moment, getting the familiar appraising look in her eye that usually came when she questioned someone -- or fussed with the dosage on their medication. "... and someone with a better sense of style than I have. Truth be told, I find the apothecary's uniform reassuring because it means not having to dress myself..."
Throné considered Castti's words for a time. Off in the distance, she could just barely hear the new continental railroad click-clacking as she thought.
"You know." Throné couldn't quite help the way her lip quirked up.
Castti shook her head. "Hm?"
"If you thought I wouldn't notice what you were implying, you're even more arrogant than I said earlier."
Castti snagged the other pillow on her bed and immediately used it to cover her face. Moving it slightly to one side so her voice could still carry, she protested, "I was going to say it the next time we talked and I didn't need to sleep off more glasses of wine than I counted..."
Throné stood up, picking up the earlier-thrown pillow and stretching. "... Then I guess I'll take my leave. Goodnight, Castti."
Castti stammered, "I -- I'm sorry if -- that is, I do find you attractive, but I wasn't entirely thinking about you specifically until a few sentences into --"
Throné massaged her temples again. "I'm encouraging you to sleep because I want to get to the part where you were going to say it but I'm not going to take advantage of a woman who, even if she's very good at making herself purgatives, really ought to sleep before she starts figuring out how this is going to change her travel plans." She tossed Castti the pillow.
Placing it behind hierself again, Castti said, "... All right. Good night, Throné."
"See you tomorrow," came Throné's reply, as she moved to exit.