RORY
He said what he said out of necessity, not cruelty: he said it because no one else was saying it, and desperately, it needed to be said. They needed to understand what they were getting into, for it had been clear that they didn't."Rory..." Maea began, and the look he leveled upon her was.. unyielding, yes, but not inherently aggressive. If it was challenging, it was only daring the others to leap to her defense; like said, he was not cruel. He did not enjoy dragging up Maea's list of non-merits. "My brother is dead."
And perhaps, perhaps, ever so slightly, his sharp edges softened. The set of his shoulders losing some of its rigidity, eyes mellowing as his chest and mouth moved in a small, small sigh.
And what he said, sleepless and haunted, was perhaps cruel. For what he replied was simply: "I know."
But Noah being dead now did not change the twenty-something years he had been alive. It did not change how most of the Naturals viewed Maea, and her circumstances. The tragedy might soften some to think kinder of her, but in the long run, he doubted it would have much bearing on their opinions of her as some form of leader.
He met her gaze steadily.
And, unmoved, he listened to what she had to say, wishing that he could burst into a violent storm, to disappear in the shriek of a strong wind and just get the hell out of there. He wanted to become a violent, faceless force of nature and tear the place up, then be gone.
Unsurprisingly, Sam was in. Rory didn't know much about the usually so quiet and withdrawn bookmaker, but from what he knew of old—information nearly a decade outdated—the man thirsted for the approval he would never receive.
Distantly, Rory wondered if he would merely be Maea's lapdog, or if he would figure out he had a voice and teeth of his own.
Evie's roundabout way of saying I'm in was.. again, complicated, tangling up the pathways his mind walked. He wanted her on his side, wanted her eloquence and her fire, wanted her to scorn this whole affair with him. Again, he found himself doubting, his index fingers running slowly and repeatedly on his arms.
"Yet here she is," he agreed with Vervain, his voice still even and calm, not afraid of yielding to that one point. He had said as much himself, hadn't he? That the things he had mentioned had little reflection on what went on in her mind?
He could appreciate the woman, for more reasons than merely saving his life. It ought to be she and Evie, Wessex instead of Sam, perhaps Amalia, since Jigano had wanted no part of a government, and likely for good reason. And someone less bullheaded than Roana—Ronin, his mind said treacherously, but Ronin had died. Rory reached up to rub his tired eyes with a thumb and middle finger.
And if Roana had not provoked him, perhaps the whole thing would've ended very differently.
Oh, riots huh? "It was the fastest way to stop you from committing a grave mistake," he finally said, not afraid of laying out the truth. "I asked you to leave, with little explanation, because the crowd was uneasy. I didn't want you getting hurt." Her fancy sword wouldn't matter much once she was surrounded and outnumbered.
But, oh, there were more jibes. Peace and order. Animosity. His hate? And dear Gods who never listened anyway: warpath?
Behind his hand, Rory laughed, the sort of helpless, deranged laugh of the sleepless.
It was better than the sharp carnivore smile his soul wore.
It amused him that she laid it all at his feet: the situation at the Spire, and the to-be-or-not-to-be of Maea's little council.
The sharp smile began to make its way onto his face as well.
How lovely and delightful that he was the enemy.
Whatever would they bond over, without evil, aggressive Rory around? Tea and biscuits? Sweeping floors? Perhaps they would start a choir. (It felt ugly, that thing blooming in his chest.) "Oh, I'm sorry if I was too busy preventing someone from possibly damning the rest of the world alongside us to make nice little meetings in rundown buildings," and his temper had begun to fray again, as evident by the snap in his voice. His eyes rolled onto Roana, darker now. "I don't hate. And what do you think I'll do, pick up a pitchfork and go all stab-happy?" He snorted. "If you want to put Maea on a pedestal for being a nice and productive counterpoint to my mad flailing, that's on you. Enjoy drinking tea and feeling important. But I'm not going to sit idly by and let someone rip up the Spire and let the Voice out. So if you'll excuse me, I have a 'riot' to go babysit."
And with a last lingering glance from his wild blue eyes he was gone.
Temperamental Rory's out. :c
as if you were on fire from within,
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.
