Chapter Text
Am I…?
The silence after her words left the sound of the curtain breathing with the night air, a small betrayal of the room’s stillness. Wise set his bag down slower than he needed to, giving the moment room to announce itself.
His eyes found her before his voice did, a flicker of something unguarded, gone before it could settle into either relief or irritation.
“Next time, you could use the door,” He said, looking at the open window.
“I could.” Remielle’s voice came from the corner, low and unhurried. He didn’t even notice that she moved from where she was in front of him. “But then you’d hear me coming. Where’s the fun in that?”
Am I a slave to recurring thoughts? Locked in rumination of your every word, enchained through every syllable, caught in the footfall of your silence.
He turned. She was perched on the edge of his desk now, one boot swinging idly, like she owned the right to occupy any surface in his room. The lamplight caught the edge of her smile—easy, practiced, the kind of smile built to be looked at rather than seen through.
“...You do this every time,” Wise sighed as he crossed his arms.
“Do what?”
“Show up. Say something vague. Leave before I can ask why. I don’t remember our Q&A game having any time limit.”
“Maybe I like the shape of your questions better than your answers.” She tilted her head, hair falling languidly. She studied him the way she studied everything, like a lock she hadn’t yet decided was worth picking. “You always look so serious when you’re about to ask something. It’s endearing.”
Wise felt his hand clench on his arm. “...Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Turn it into a compliment so I forget I asked.”
A light flickered behind her eyes, gone before he could name it.
Am I the one who fears your entrance more than your exit? To hope for your stay in the moment of your departure, to grasp the surface in the drought of reality.
“Fine,” she said, an edge under the lightness now, thin as wire. “Ask, then. Since you’re so determined tonight.”
He hesitated— not from the lack of the question, but from the sudden, unfamiliar weight of being allowed to ask. She rarely handed him the opening. Usually, he had to pry it from between her jokes like a denny from a closed fist.
“Why do you come back…?” he said. “If you’re only going to leave the second it means something?”
The slight discomfort of your tone, the fold of your lips, leaves a question of your sincerity. Do your words just perform for a ghost of an audience?
Remielle laughed, but it came out thinner than usual, missing its footing halfway through. “That’s dramatic.” She rolled her eyes, legs crossing the other. “I come here…because you make good conversation, Mr. Model Citizen.”
“That’s not an answer…” Wise grumbled.
“It is an answer. You didn’t specify quality.”
“Remielle.”
“Wise.”
“...”
“...”
They stared at each other, and for a moment neither one blinked first, a standoff dressed up as banter, both of them aware of the game and neither willing to be the one who stopped playing it.
Am I reading your silence for another? A hint of a whisper through your brow, the narrow question through your eyelids.
She moved closer to the curtains, heels clicking through the room. He walked after her. Not fast, he’d learned that much; too fast and she would bolt, would make the window suddenly interesting again. Deliberate instead. Closing the distance she usually kept measured.
“You always sit like that,” he said. “Near the door. Near the window. Like you’re already halfway leaving before you’ve finished arriving.”
Her wings ruffled. “Would you rather I sit in the middle of the room and let you lock it?”
“I’d rather you sit like you trust the room not to hurt you.”
Clench.
That landed somewhere he hadn’t expected it to. Her jaw tightened, just slightly, her wings folding into herself.
Am I the reason for your hands in your pockets? Always unsure of whether I am worth being held by your fingers, the swell in the crease of a cramp, yet only your nails are left digging in your palms.
“You don’t know what rooms have done to me,” she said. Quiet. Controlled in a way that meant it wasn't. “So don’t stand there and act like patience is the same thing as understanding.”
“I’m not trying to understand everything. I just want you to stop leaving before I’ve had the chance to—”
“Maybe I leave because you might.”
“...”
“...”
The words hung there, unguarded in a way that surprised them both. She looked, for one unshielded second, like someone who’d said more than she meant to. And then, her expression smoothed back into the face she wore before.
“...Forget I said that,” she added, too quickly.
Wise pursed his lips. “No.”
“You—”
“No,” he said again, softer. “I’m not going to forget that. You don’t get to hand something real and then snatch it back because it scared you on the way out, Remielle.”
“Tsk.” She scoffed. She moved as her hands found purchase on the couch. “You say that like honesty is simple for people like me.”
Am I even an ache in your head?
His footsteps rang closer. “I never said it was simple. I said I wanted it anyway.”
She paced, putting a few feet of floor between them, not toward the window this time…just….away. Like she needed the room to breathe in before she could answer. She stopped at the arm of the couch again, farther this time.
If you were to dig through my chest, through blood, muscle, and pleura—clenched, and hold my heart in your clutch, would you finally know me?
“You want to know me,” she said, testing the words like they belonged to someone else. “Everyone says that, Wise.”
Eyebrows knitting, his foot tapping the floor. “I’m tired of the push and pull, Remielle. You can’t just—
“And you don’t think I’m tired too? To live like I am every day?” She hissed. “You only want to know me; I have to exist as myself every moment.” Her nails raked the couch, leaving hollowed indents on the velvet cloth. “You don’t know what that’s like.”
“...”
His jaw clenched, saliva nearly caught in his throat. She looked at him with her eyes narrowed. His tongue felt sour, and as she thought he wouldn’t say anything—
“You’re right,” he said finally.
Her claws stilled against the couch, the tension in her hand easing by degrees, like she hadn’t expected him to agree with her.
“I don’t know what that’s like. I don’t wake up every day and have to be something before the alarm rings,” he continued.
Her eyes flickered to his one and the other, wary, as if expecting him to argue instead.
He moved just a tiny inch closer. “...But that’s not what I’m asking for, Remielle.” He kept his voice even, refusing to match the hiss in hers, though there was nothing soft in it either. “I never asked you to stop existing as yourself so I could…have easier access to you. I asked to be let in on it…”
“I—”
“That’s different from asking you to be someone for me.” He said before she could start. “I…I’m not asking you to be less of yourself but be more open to me.”
He could see the purse of her lips, the crack of pink before she spoke, “...It doesn’t feel different from where I’m standing.”
The couch creaked as he shifted his weight, buying himself a second before he spoke. A soft exhale came through. “Then tell me what it feels like instead of assuming I already know and getting angry at me for it.” His hands found the arm of the couch opposite hers. “Because right now, you’re mad at a version of me that wants a piece of you.”
His breathing slowed. “...I don’t want just a piece, Remielle. I want the exhausting parts too.”
Her hand stilled against the velvet.
“You don’t get to decide that’s…too much for me to want,” he added, quieter now. “I get to decide that…and I haven’t left yet.”
Inhale.
“I’m still here.”
Exhale.
“...You’ve been here for weeks,” she said, eyes unsure. “That’s not the same as staying.”
His eyes creased as he spoke, “Then let me stay long enough to prove it’s different.”
Am I asking you to open first so I don’t have to? To reach the sky like a thief and find only the cold in my hands?
“...”
“...”
“...”
“...”
She didn’t answer right away. The silence stretched long enough that he thought he’d lost the thread to her entirely, that she’d already retreated to somewhere behind her own eyes even standing three feet from him. Then…quieter than he’d ever heard her…
“...I don’t know how to let someone stay without shaking…without being unsure...”
Her wings drew in, folding tighter against her back, like she could make herself smaller than the admission she’d just made. Her eyes wandered to the floor between them, her face looking away as if ashamed.
The sadness in her tone rings a hollow chord in his chest—the loneliness she usually hides now open. His hand twitched at his side, half a motion toward her before he stopped himself.
“...Then shake,” Wise said. “I’m not going anywhere just because you're unsure.”
When the eye catches a linger, stood as if we were frozen. When the veil is just a thin silk, an unbidden glimpse of hidden vulnerability. Did you flinch or did you mirror me?
Something in her posture gave, chin dropping to hide the flicker behind her gaze. The kind of surrender too small to name but…too real to take back. She didn’t move toward him.
Did she need to? The distance between them had already changed shape, even standing still.
Her sigh surprised him slightly, her words a whisper, “...Ask me something else,” Eyes flicking up to him. “Something small. I’ll try. That’s…all I can promise, that…I’ll try.”
He thought about it, really racked in his proxy brain, because he understood that this offer wouldn’t come twice in one night.
“...What are you afraid I’ll find if you stay long enough for me to look?”
Am I a fool? To think faith is something you just believe in?
She almost smiled—raw, sadder around the edges. “...That there’s nothing under all of it worth staying for. That the mystery was…just that, the only interesting part…”
Something in his chest tightened at that. Not belief. Just…the ache of hearing her think so little of what he’d find.
“That’s not true.” He said it too fast, like he couldn’t let the thought sit unanswered a second longer. “And that’s not…That’s not what I’m afraid of finding.”
“...No?” she whispered.
His hand curled slightly against his knee.
“...No.” He held her gaze, steady, unwilling to let this be another thing she talked her way out of again. “I’m afraid that if I stop pushing, you’ll disappear before I ever get the chance to find out.”
Am I gullible? To see warmth in roots unmoored?
She looked away, not trusting her eyes to hide her emotion. Her lips trembled, as if unsure of what she was about to say.
“...Ask me to stay,” she said. She let go of a breath she didn’t know she held. “...Just once... See if I believe you enough to try.”
Am I asking the wrong question—
His hand tightened on the arm of the couch, like the word needed somewhere to go besides his mouth. A roll of the lip, the clench of his fingers, an exhale—
“Stay.”
'..!'
Her breath stilled—
Am I to trust you to trust me?