allthatgoes | it's almost like only I exist

Original comments from original post are still here.

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Gradually, on the way up the stairs, the young man who had walked in the front door (something he almost never did) transformed into the woman who ended up on the second floor foyer. This took a little bit of time; she unbuttoned her top button, unhooked her binders and slid them into her bag as she walked, untied her hair and let it fall in loose, snow-covered brown locks to her sides.

Her eyes sparkled on the steps.

It wasn't home, but it was getting to be comfortable.

She had no corset and was dressed in a man's coat and a man's top and a man's trousers, and her boots clunked in an unladylike noisy fashion, and the previously mentioned snow started falling to the floor. Distracted by the light catching it, she turned, overbalanced and nearly crashed right into the unfortunate, startled manservant.

"Oh," said Iamus, when he figured out who she actually was, having been concerned that some stranger actually had gotten in the house, and it wasn't just his master's overactive mind.

She wasn't a stranger, though; she was an apologetic-looking familiar houseguest who also smelled about five times more like death than usual.

"I'm sorry," Lírít, as that was finally her name again, said, and then "hello," and then, "I hate to ask, but could you –"

"Draw you a bath?"

She laughed.

"That will do, yes. And food – I haven't eaten in quite a while now."

"Sick with consumption, out in the snow, haven't eaten in 'a while,'" Iamus shook his head. "Between you and him, I am not sure how I'm supposed to keep track –"

"A while might be a day maximum!"

"A while it is, then. Food and a bath, in reverse order?"

"Yes. And – where is he? Has he slept since I've been gone?"

Iamus shook his head. Lírít wasn't really surprised.

She hadn't been in Domitian proper in two weeks. Two weeks wasn't really long enough for the master of the house to have slept much at all. He also claimed to worry; she insisted it was nonsense to, there were fewer people safer in active danger than she at the time, and there were people watching out for her in case.

And no news was good news.

This had been said over and over time and time again, and no news kept worrying him. It didn't contribute that much to keeping him awake, though, she was willing to bet – considering it was that everything contributed to keeping him awake. One more thing was only one more thing in an almost infinite list.

Mads Søren, though, turned out to be at his desk, which was only a guess on the part of Iamus – but a good one seeing as how he hadn't actually left that room in three days except for the lavatory and the occasional picking at what might have been an attempt at a meal. He was working hard at something, and nobody had actually wanted to ask what it was. (Besides, Iamus had been busy blowing up the garden shed while Lírít wasn't around to do something like offer to help.)

When she poked her head in the doorway, he was asleep, head on top of a pile of papers.

This was a situation that was actually more dangerous than it would be with most people, because with most people who'd fallen asleep at a desk the worst risk one had to take was that one might get hit by the startled person jumping up. With him, it was a little different – when waking him up one would have to be careful not to get confused with a Crown agent and stabbed.

She, at least, was trained. Lírít had been taught by Benson Tauley, leader and king of the criminal underground for most of his life, ruler of the Tauley Street Runners, and so she knew how to move silently. (Dancing helped.) Silently enough, anyway, to be able to avoid being attacked long enough to slip across the room, walking toe-to-heel instead of heel-to-toe and sit on the arm of his chair, whispering in his ear, "I brought you a present."

It had the effect she'd expected; he went "mnnngh?" and then almost instantly snapped his head up and leapt for her in a messy and uncoordinated fashion that Lírít had been counting on. She was going to keep her mouth shut, as she clasped her bag close and hopped off the end of the chair and moved at calculated speeds across the room and away from his grasp, yet she couldn't help but laugh as he wobbled a bit and waved his hand in the air and eventually managed, "You."

"Me," she said with a bright (literally) grin from across the room, and took a step closer. "Are you calmer?"

"You – you – I'd wor–"

"Now don't tell me you worried," Lírít's confident voice turned to a murmur, as he stood and she stepped closer and onto her toes and touched her finger to his lips. "I don't want to hear any of that. You know how I feel about that, and yes, I know how you feel about me going. I am in one piece, I'm not wounded or even superficially cut too much, I'm just tired and smell awful and I'm hungry and cold." She was tempted then to cough, but held it back. "The smell is for you, though."

He gave her a very bewildered sort of look, hair falling in front of those blue eyes she had to force herself to look away from, to stop staring at. Blinking to clear it away, because when she stopped to stare at him she saw that raw concern in his eyes and she just couldn't take it, she continued, "Like I said, a present. It's been almost a week I've been carrying it around, so the smell has stuck in my hair and my pores and – that's not the point. The point, well, the point is we didn't know what it was, and he's not going to use it anymore, so I brought it for you."

Mads kept staring at her, lost.

She wondered what he was thinking, as he stared.

She didn't ask.

Instead, Lírít opened up the bag and pulled out a large Masonlike jar; inside was what very well might have at one point been a hand. It certainly had the initial shape of a hand, but was bloated out of proportion, with bloody bits and giant, black, oozing pustules growing where skin used to be. A lot of it was eaten away direct to the center in a fragmented sort of fashion, and lastly, it was no longer attached to an arm or a person, which made it even less handlike than it could've been.

The thing was decomposing slightly and disease-ridden and utterly disgusting, and, as she had expected, Mads Søren (being who he was) was utterly thrilled by it. His eyes were almost a more beautiful shade of that blue (stop it, Lírít, don't think about it like that) when they lit up like that, and she didn't see him grin very often but when he did it was always surprising how enthusiastic he'd get about something, from the invention of the flame-starter to watching how her hands created a violet glow to, well, disembodied rotting hands.

"It's amazing," he blurted, also as she had expected. (She'd come to know the way he spoke.) "Utterly amazing! What is it?"

"A hand." Patronizing and teasing, because of course he knew what it was, and she gave him a 'duh sort of look.

"Well, I know that, I mean, what is it?"

"That is why I am giving it to you. Because I don't know, and its former owner would like to know what killed him. Well, we know what killed him, it was me, but why he was suffering so much he felt he had no other option –"

Mads cut her off with a light kiss to the lips, a surprise every time he did it even when it had started to become more of a habit for him. Then he wrinkled his nose, and she laughed, apologetic.

"Like I said," Lírít began.

"Put lemons in your hair," Mads finished.

"Actually, that isn't what I said."

"It's what you should do. Helps with the smell." His eyes were no longer on her, but on the jar.

"You work on that," she told him, smiling charmingly, "do whatever you'd like to it, it's all yours with the regards of its previously mentioned former owner, please don't ask me about the rest of the body, and I would like my bath, lemons or not, and then my meal. Iamus is being quite helpful. I'll see you later, okay?"

"I'll eat with you," he told her.

She knew he wouldn't. She knew he'd get distracted by the hand. Iamus would eat with her, though, and maybe later she'd see Whit and Julian for drinks. Mads probably wouldn't be free from the call of the mysterious condition of the hand until late in the night, when she'd come back from her drinks and seeing her family and crawl into his bed and say she was cold, and he'd wrap around her and lean his head against her shoulder and say he loved her, and she'd say I thought you said you wouldn't say that again, and he would say I won't ever after this once, and then the conversation would change and shift for a little while longer and they'd both sleep, and when they woke up the conversation about love never happened, and wouldn't come up until it was yet again dark and they were all alone.

"Okay," she said, and tapped the edge of his nose, and took off down the hall again.

It wasn't home, but it was getting to be comfortable.