[ A few days, perhaps a week, and then there is a fold of parchment slid beneath the door, sealed with a cypress crest pressed into wax. If the dry hint of incense clinging to the paper and the fine, unadorned script aren't familiar enough, the ink is a particular shade of crimson Isaac might recall purchasing some months ago. ]
Isaac,
This letter was very nearly something else. Another bottle of wine, perhaps. Some simpler token of apology. It seemed unnecessarily dramatic to lay out my thoughts in some grand treatise, as if you would not have a number of valid counterpoints to each. But I hope there is value too in delivering all of this together in ink and paper, where you might have the freedom to consider your answer in your own time.
I should not have involved you in something I did not intend to be transparent about. Other people's secrets are not something I share easily; I ought not to have asked you to do what I would not. It was a thoughtless question, and I am sorry for it.
[ But not, apparently, for keeping said secret in the first place. ]
I have come to rely on your judgement in many things, without asking whether you wish to be so relied upon, or what you expect of me in return. In the process, I suppose I have made some assumptions about the limits of your interest in me. Perhaps it is better ask—
Is my trust something you want?
We have shared things neither of us offers lightly. That alone means more to me than can be committed to paper. But you are very good at avoiding my questions — better even than I am at avoiding yours. It is not a challenge I mind; there is a familiar safety in secrecy for us both, and a pleasure in the unraveling. But what I have of you is not all that I want. If you would have more of my trust, I would ask a measure of yours.
What that means precisely, I leave to you. Ask something of me and I will answer. Allow me a piece of you in return, and I will keep it safe. Or allow me nothing but what you have already given, and I will keep that in my confidence just the same. Whatever you decide, I would have it offered freely, as I do now.
[ a few days of their own; a letter tucked where he'll find it later. he hasn't troubled to seal it at all. ]
Ilias,
Of course I want you. That’s the problem of it.
Much as I esteem your discretion, you offer it from the advantage. It's been easier for us both to pretend otherwise. There is a comfort in familiarity, true, as there is little simpler than the weaving of two to one: The blur between a reflection and its image. Skin repeats and we may think ourselves single in nature; seen.
I have made a habit of ignoring the glass.
I don’t have a grandmother, Ilias. No one is watching to see me well — and what you've seen was not all freely shared. I never wanted to give you a monster, but how still you took it in your hands. Familiar. I'd be a liar to claim it didn't trouble me.
You’ve addressed your letter to Isaac, by which you mean me. Montsimmard seldom agreed about that: I was taught to write Isik and Ysaac and Izak. I must have been a dozen such men before a man at all. I don’t have a grandmother, Ilias; I hardly have a name. If you want more of me, care for what you would leave me with. Affection is pleasant. It isn’t enough.
I know that you worry after your tongue, imagine it dusty, but you’ve always done well by me. Isaac. It’s the same in Orlais as Nevarra. It’s not how my mother said it.
[ Enclosed within the well-sealed response is a small packet, folded to crimp on all edges; inside, the amount of ash a single sheet of parchment might produce. The exterior reads, For your peace of mind. One of them ought to care a whit about privacy.
(And if there's a certain dramatic appeal in being the only two (three) who will ever set eyes on a letter, well, that must be incidental.) ]
Isaac,
You are not wrong, of course. You have a keener eye for distinctions than I. Not only because my position makes such things regrettably easy to overlook, however. It is a shortcoming I navigate with more difficulty than I think wise to admit to most, but while I may keep others' secrets well guarded, I do trust the gentleness you have shown with mine.
In my life there have been those whose edges became indistinguishable from my own, who I let myself be drowned in. You might call them monstrous, but in them as much as you, I consider choice more important than potential. Still, it is a dangerous thing to lose one's self in another and call it understanding. All those since, I have allowed no more of me than skin for fear of a repetition.
Already, you have more of me than skin. You have more than my affection. What advantage I have over you, I cannot will away, but what steps I can take to even our footing, you need only name. If I am at times in some small terror to offer you more still, understand it is only because I know not where I ought stop. But an exchange of trust need not be even to provide a gauge by which to measure. Perhaps in the end that is fairer. It is at least a place I am content to start.
Teach me someday, the way you were called when you were named. Not today, not for years if you like, but should the Maker grant us time and your patience with my incessant curiosity hold throughout it, I would learn every face you care to show me.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ahem.
no subject
Ilias,
Of course I want you. That’s the problem of it.
Much as I esteem your discretion, you offer it from the advantage. It's been easier for us both to pretend otherwise. There is a comfort in familiarity, true, as there is little simpler than the weaving of two to one: The blur between a reflection and its image. Skin repeats and we may think ourselves single in nature; seen.
I have made a habit of ignoring the glass.
I don’t have a grandmother, Ilias. No one is watching to see me well — and what you've seen was not all freely shared. I never wanted to give you a monster, but how still you took it in your hands. Familiar. I'd be a liar to claim it didn't trouble me.
You’ve addressed your letter to Isaac, by which you mean me. Montsimmard seldom agreed about that: I was taught to write Isik and Ysaac and Izak. I must have been a dozen such men before a man at all. I don’t have a grandmother, Ilias; I hardly have a name. If you want more of me, care for what you would leave me with. Affection is pleasant. It isn’t enough.
I know that you worry after your tongue, imagine it dusty, but you’ve always done well by me. Isaac. It’s the same in Orlais as Nevarra. It’s not how my mother said it.
[ there's no further signature ]
no subject
(And if there's a certain dramatic appeal in being the only two (
three) who will ever set eyes on a letter, well, that must be incidental.) ]