Would he do it, were they set against it? Maybe. Marcus is a backstop he'll invoke when required, but Isaac's aware of where that protection ends; long before either lover's.
"I can't think them happy of it," That it would be wrong of to protest — that means altogether little in these matters. "But I suppose we've all trialed loss enough to choose a lesser pain."
“The beginning of it, at least,” a bleak bit of humour on the matter of planning one’s recovery, and all the myriad things that might complicate it between now and then. Or then and further, still. “I’ve made arrangements to begin the work of my prosthesis with Mssr Viktor, and to make preparations for the surgery itself in the infirmary. That, of course — I wished to speak with you before anything could be finalised.”
Items on a list, methodically done; each piece in play and in place. It’s soothing, and not less so for knowing that control to be illusory.
(She did not become deaf, so it is a choice not to remark upon how her nearest feel about her firm decision.)
“Assuming a best case scenario and making allowances for one that is not, I will wish to provide that timeline to the Ambassador and our scouting mistress to manage expectations for my work. I presume that our head healer will appraise the Provost.”
"Oh, probably. They're always trying to send me back and forth." Has he asked the Head Healer? Has he asked the Provost? As though he'd not contact whoever he intended — "They've a device that numbs the limb. I've concerns of it,"
Hurt is a signal. Easier to miss a painless infection, or that more ephemeral change in feeling which presages trouble.
"But you'll want it for the early days, and that asks Tavane be weaned, if she isn't already."
How good, she thinks, to have never been in an urgent rush to lose a limb. The thought feels absurd enough to nearly laugh,
but she suspects a hysteria at the edge of that that she ought not indulge. Says, instead, “A greater lead time can only be of benefit to Mssr Viktor’s work. Some, he has indicated, can only be done once the amputation itself is dealt with, but not all.”
For a moment, she lingers in a thought, pensive. Finally,
“Madame de Fonce had offered me her own, the first that she pressed me with these matters. I have never more strongly regretted foolish words spoken in haste than to have spoken to her of my own vanity on the matter. I’ve often fancied myself above it, you know; I have never been a devotee of fashion. I imagined,”
while they are being uncomfortably frank with one another,
“that you might understand how it is to be challenged in one’s self-perception.”
No, he doesn't imagine that went well. His head tips back, eye languid over shoulder, and from that angle it's easy to imagine: A time when wry looks might have cast some rakish charm.
But everyone grows up.
"I trust you've had it before." Birth changes the body, and while he knows little of the husband, he knows enough to guess at control. "Some will leap to it, keen to remind you how beautiful you are,"
(She is that.)
"Despite it all." A mark of power, however thoughtlessly exchanged, and their work doesn't draw the thoughtless. They'll use it. Call it vanity, or safety — "I don't think it a failing to wish to recognize oneself."
Only an impossibility. There's scant alike between age and the prospect before her, Isaac doesn't scar or stand a wound. Can't grow his teeth back either, or will hair and wrinkle to bend; returns time and again to the shape of a different man.
So she has fancied herself above it. She is not the woman who died so long ago. She's this one, and this one may cop to an affection of her limbs.
I expect her, still, in the mirror, she doesn’t say. In the light of day, those memories had and had not felt like her own— the lines blur, where she draws the separation. Birthed two children. A body that remembers only one. A body that is her own, to do with as she will, to live as she will,
to alter as she will. Well, and small wonder that she should have for so long found the idea of binding one’s sense of self to being a rifter distasteful. What, one might as well ask, exactly sense of self is that?
“I know myself in the thought that there will be halls in which it plays well for me,” she says, a touch more wry. “The ego, you understand,” he understands, “of the lengths to which I will go to have what is had here.”
All the ways in which she is underestimated and it terrifies her to risk making any of them real, but of course, it isn’t even difficult to envision the ways she can make this work for her if she wishes to. Only if she thinks on it, as she has done, beyond that first moment, where entirely unlike herself she had spoken wholly without thinking at all.
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no subject
"I can't think them happy of it," That it would be wrong of to protest — that means altogether little in these matters. "But I suppose we've all trialed loss enough to choose a lesser pain."
"Had you a timeline in mind?"
no subject
Items on a list, methodically done; each piece in play and in place. It’s soothing, and not less so for knowing that control to be illusory.
(She did not become deaf, so it is a choice not to remark upon how her nearest feel about her firm decision.)
“Assuming a best case scenario and making allowances for one that is not, I will wish to provide that timeline to the Ambassador and our scouting mistress to manage expectations for my work. I presume that our head healer will appraise the Provost.”
no subject
Hurt is a signal. Easier to miss a painless infection, or that more ephemeral change in feeling which presages trouble.
"But you'll want it for the early days, and that asks Tavane be weaned, if she isn't already."
John's stump still ached, years on.
no subject
but she suspects a hysteria at the edge of that that she ought not indulge. Says, instead, “A greater lead time can only be of benefit to Mssr Viktor’s work. Some, he has indicated, can only be done once the amputation itself is dealt with, but not all.”
For a moment, she lingers in a thought, pensive. Finally,
“Madame de Fonce had offered me her own, the first that she pressed me with these matters. I have never more strongly regretted foolish words spoken in haste than to have spoken to her of my own vanity on the matter. I’ve often fancied myself above it, you know; I have never been a devotee of fashion. I imagined,”
while they are being uncomfortably frank with one another,
“that you might understand how it is to be challenged in one’s self-perception.”
no subject
But everyone grows up.
"I trust you've had it before." Birth changes the body, and while he knows little of the husband, he knows enough to guess at control. "Some will leap to it, keen to remind you how beautiful you are,"
(She is that.)
"Despite it all." A mark of power, however thoughtlessly exchanged, and their work doesn't draw the thoughtless. They'll use it. Call it vanity, or safety — "I don't think it a failing to wish to recognize oneself."
Only an impossibility. There's scant alike between age and the prospect before her, Isaac doesn't scar or stand a wound. Can't grow his teeth back either, or will hair and wrinkle to bend; returns time and again to the shape of a different man.
So she has fancied herself above it. She is not the woman who died so long ago. She's this one, and this one may cop to an affection of her limbs.
no subject
to alter as she will. Well, and small wonder that she should have for so long found the idea of binding one’s sense of self to being a rifter distasteful. What, one might as well ask, exactly sense of self is that?
“I know myself in the thought that there will be halls in which it plays well for me,” she says, a touch more wry. “The ego, you understand,” he understands, “of the lengths to which I will go to have what is had here.”
All the ways in which she is underestimated and it terrifies her to risk making any of them real, but of course, it isn’t even difficult to envision the ways she can make this work for her if she wishes to. Only if she thinks on it, as she has done, beyond that first moment, where entirely unlike herself she had spoken wholly without thinking at all.