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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Avrenne Esprit returns home, and examines how much has changed over the past month, and yet how much has stayed the same. 1600-ish words. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
Arc: Ringside Seats
Chain: Siarenne
He would kill him. Well, he would go back to the harbor to hunt Mr. Green down like an animal, drag him over somewhere, shove a pistol into his hands, and then kill him.
Avrenne Esprit opened the door to her house like she expected the handle to burn her, but she knew the fire wasn’t there. Mr. Green had been right about one thing, if nothing else. She wasn’t angry. No, that hand around her neck had squeezed and squeezed, and it had not ever been anger; this was just pain. The fire had never come with pain, only fear and rage. If Mr. Green had bothered to really look at her, he would have seen it, but he had never been able to read her when she controlled her expression. But the Commodore had known.
She couldn’t really let him kill Mr. Green, even assuming there could actually be a duel between them.
Unless she asked him to.
Or if he just did it anyway.
Or if she had let those thirty seconds tick by and had let Mr. Green believe that she was going to stop it, and then…hadn’t. She couldn’t have been blamed for simply standing by, not as a lady in that situation.
Except that if she had let it happen, it would have bound the Commodore to her as soundly as a contract in the eyes of those watching. And a man like him, who lived by his own honor so exacting that he would let it cut him as deeply as he did, would have held to that. She couldn’t help but think that his offer, his defense now, had been in some way his own, that it had been a memory of what had been done to him, and now, at last, a place to find some measure of justice. And the thought of trapping him that way, where he might not have the ending to his story that he deserved, had been enough to make her show the truth to Mr. Green and prevent it.
None of it would change, however, the way Lord Siamus Fallon had stood beside her, a bulwark against that stupid, simple man in her defense, as though nothing mattered more in all the world than Avrenne’s honor and reputation and future. It was burned into her mind’s eye.
She hadn’t wanted to look. She was afraid of what she’d see, of the weakness of her heart, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself. And that tiny flame she’d been hiding away in her chest, covering it over and over (Morgauna, he could be Morgauna’s, she wasn’t sure, couldn’t ever truly be sure), trying to smother it (“He's absolutely outrageous in his criteria. He will hardly consider any of the ladies I try to present him until he's gone through their finances himself.”), burst into an inferno there in the harbor, a spontaneous combustion of feeling that took her over and burned her to ash.
One week – she’d decried how fast Mr. Green must have fallen. And here she was. She hadn’t even known the Commodore for a week. Four days. That was all it had taken. A dance. A rescue. A speech. A respite. A morning. A defense. And she’d fallen so far in love that she was not certain how she was meant to stand back up.
How could she be so stupid?
What was worse, perhaps, was that he was not alone there, in her heart. Like a crack in her defenses, the Captain remained, as immovable as a glacier, a very different type of love. The ice she had trusted to hold her weight, to stay cold and frozen, had broken beneath her feet. But instead of the cold water she had expected, it had been hot – boiling over enough to burn her skin, where she could feel the ghost of his hands and lips on her, a touch down her back repeating over and over and over until she’d go mad with it.
Avrenne set her hands over her face and pressed hard, enough to leave small marks on her face.
What did she do now? She couldn’t have the Commodore. She couldn’t take the Captain now that he had possibly – she cut that thought off and set it aside. And yet, she could not simply do nothing, and wait for the timer to go off. Maybe someone else had the luxury of nursing a twice broken heart, of standing there in the doorway of her home and remembering the touch of cold hands trembling in hers on a beautiful dance floor, the sound of soft laughter under the heavenly light of the stars, the smell of black currant and wormwood in a stunning sentence of a garden, the sight of dark eyes glittering dangerously ready to defend her in the middle of a harbor, but Avrenne Esprit did not.
“Avrenne?” It was Finley. A question of her name, and then, with much greater concern, “Avrenne, what is it?” The sound of his footsteps coming closer, and she lowered her hands. The look of worry was immediately replaced with anger as he took in the marks on her face, the way her eyes were still red, and he shook his head, lips gone so thin as to disappear.
Avrenne held a hand up before he leapt to some conclusion. “Mr. Green has returned from Northrend,” she explained.
The anger whooshed out of Finley like someone had cut the wind of the sails of a ship. “Ah. Fuck.” He looked away from her.
“Mr. Green is back?” Sophie asked quietly, as she crossed towards the hall from the sitting room, likely drawn by their voices.
“Yes.” Avrenne forced the word to sound simple, but she felt that pit in her stomach opening and she placed a hand over it reflexively, trying to contain it. She could feel her hand growing warmer, as the fear whispered in her ear.
Sophie frowned. “You talked with him?” It was not quite a guess; by now the older woman knew Avrenne all too well. She would have never simply let him pass without saying something. It had never been in her nature to surrender completely, and she had owed Mr. Green at least one shot fired at him.
She’d forgotten, until he said her name, that it was pointless. He’d never understand. His view of the world had always been so simple. Whatever that woman had convinced him of, she’d sunk in her corruption so deep that the effort Avrenne would have to spend on removing it was so far beyond the return she could see on that investment that it would have been criminal to even think of trying.
“Talked with who?” Isla asked, peeking into things from the hallway, because there were now three of them standing in the front of the house, and the young girl’s curiosity would someday get her into trouble.
“Mr. Green,” Finley spat out like it was a curse. Isla’s expression darkened in that sudden rage she was capable of, her hands going to her hips.
“Well! Is he dead then?” Isla asked in that way of a child who could still think of the world in such extremes of loyalty, to wish a man dead because he’d hurt someone she cared about, and believe herself callous enough to celebrate it had it come to pass. All those days of piggy back rides, of cartwheels on the grass, of little lemonades and candy treats brought back from trips to the market, suddenly forgotten in rage. But Avrenne knew it would haunt the young girl, had Mr. Green actually died. She had been the most attached to the man, of all of them.
“No,” Avrenne said honestly, as she walked forward deeper into the house, holding onto herself with a brittle iron grip.
“Where is he?” Isla demanded, and there was that threat in her voice.
Avrenne waved a hand in the air to dismiss the thought. “Leave it, Isla. We have nothing more to do with him now.”
“But – “ Isla protested.
“Leave it, Isla,” Finley snapped in echo of Avrenne’s words, the anger in his voice guaranteed to rile Isla up.
“It’s not right!” Isla shouted back.
Avrenne kept walking. They would argue, and Isla would yell, and Finley would yell, and then he’d say something horrible, and Isla would burst into tears, and they would both end the fight with him apologizing, holding her in a careful hug, and it would pass. She could halt it now, but she was so tired, and there was still so much to do.
“Sophie,” Avrenne said quietly as she left her eldest and youngest ward to their battle, moving towards her room that functioned as much as her study as her bedroom, and she heard the older woman following her.
“Milady?”
“I need the list.” Avrenne opened the door to her room, and looked into it – for a moment, another room flashed in front of her eyes, of a soft sea salt place, of roses and dreams and then it was gone – her shoulders held rigid.
“Which one?” Sophie asked. “The bachelors…or the assassins? Or both?”
Avrenne thought about it again.
He would have killed Mr. Green, right there. For her.
And lost his entire future to her. Like the captain almost had in the garden, had someone seen them. Two men, nearly ruined, to try to save one, single woman who had done this to herself, trusting in her heart instead of her head. The Commodore who wanted some woman of perfect criteria, whatever it was, waiting for her to appear and likely far beyond Avrenne’s limited reach. The Captain who wanted Avrenne, but none of what she was beyond it, and whose reason to sign that contract would damn her as much to what she had allowed Mr. Green to do and sign them both away on his sentiment.
Avrenne stood still, eyes unseeing what was in front of her for a long moment. She couldn’t stop. Couldn’t just give up. House Esprit would not fall. She would not fall.
“The bachelors. I will take another look.”