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I think I like these two. I wanted something that dealt with the shooting, and the scar, and Childermass ended up half-naked, which is perhaps never a bad thing. They have a lot to deal with, though. They are a darkling joy.
Title: Of A Morning
Rating: PG
Fandom: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (TV)
Characters/Pairings: John Childermass, Emma Pole, John/Emma
Summary: An angry woman barging into your room while you are half-naked and bathing is not the best start to a morning. There are things, both grudges and comforts, that need airing between John Childermass and Lady Pole, however, and they are not inclined to wait for a more decorous hour. Perhaps, as it turns out, quite fortunately
Wordcount: 3875
Warnings/Notes: Mornings, bathing, confrontations, anger, scars, reconciliation, angst & humour, hurt/comfort, desire, kissing, happy ending
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Of A Morning
Rating: PG
Fandom: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (TV)
Characters/Pairings: John Childermass, Emma Pole, John/Emma
Summary: An angry woman barging into your room while you are half-naked and bathing is not the best start to a morning. There are things, both grudges and comforts, that need airing between John Childermass and Lady Pole, however, and they are not inclined to wait for a more decorous hour. Perhaps, as it turns out, quite fortunately
Wordcount: 3875
Warnings/Notes: Mornings, bathing, confrontations, anger, scars, reconciliation, angst & humour, hurt/comfort, desire, kissing, happy ending
Disclaimer: Not mine
Of A Morning
Disturbing a man in his room, almost before the sun was even up, was not particularly well-regarded behaviour for a young woman of quality. Emma Pole, however, as Childermass was beginning to realise, gave not one iota of care for such things any longer. He supposed he didn't entirely blame her for that. A reputation for illness and madness, and a variety of imprisonments both magical and mundane because of it, would not incline anyone to care very much for the society that had allowed them.
He still did not particularly care for the pleasure of having his room barged into, however. Especially not at the crack of dawn, and most especially not when he was half-stripped and in the middle of bathing. He generally did not care overmuch for propriety himself, but he did at least prefer to be clothed when greeting angry visitors. If nothing else, it gave an oft-useful illusion of dignity, whereas a man standing half-naked in his breeches allowed for very few illusions at all.
It did stop her in her tracks somewhat, though. Momentum carried her more than a foot into his room, but surprise stopped her almost immediately afterwards. She stared at him open-mouthed, momentarily distracted from whatever temper had driven her in here in the first place. He stared back, equally startled, cold water dripping down one arm from the sponge still held in his hand. His mind was entirely blank. He'd had a long, hard ride the night before, and it was too early in the morning by far for such visitations. And so, for a moment, neither of them moved, caught in a somewhat mutually stunned impasse.
Childermass recovered first. He had been company to magicians for years, after all. He'd have made a damned poor show of it if he couldn't muster himself in the face of surprise visitations.
"... Can I help you?" he managed. He lowered his arm, absently shoving the sponge back onto the wash stand. The dripping had started to become annoying. Lady Pole merely blinked at him, still mildly pole-axed. Really, Childermass didn't know what she had expected. A man was entitled to bathe in his own bloody rooms, after all. If she was going to come barging in at all hours, she could hardly be that surprised by it.
And she wasn't, he saw. Her eyes narrowed instantly as he spoke, temper still swimming below the surface a bit. So then. She had remembered herself, and her grudges also. He braced himself for whatever they might be. He'd only been back in Starecross half a night. He couldn't think off-hand how the devil he'd managed to offend her, when he hadn't even seen her yet this trip.
However he'd managed it, though, she didn't see fit to enlighten him just yet. She had regained the use of her senses, all right, but it seemed the lady had been wholly side-tracked regardless. She frowned, staring at something on his chest, and in defiance of all propriety came even further into his room, gazing intently at it all the while. Childermass blinked, mildly disconcerted, and turned to face her properly. He resisted the urge to cross his arms across his naked chest. He was hardly a blushing youth any longer, and if the lady wanted to see, she could look her fill. He was not John Segundus. He was not likely to shrink in embarrassment for it.
She came abreast of him, a somewhat odd expression on her face. She looked up at his face, a curiously intent look, and then back to his chest. "Is that ... Is that mine?" she asked, out of the blue, and for a good second he did not understand her. He looked down at his chest, almost to check, but there was nothing on it that might belong to her, or indeed anyone. There was nothing on it at all. Her expression was not prurient, however. It took him a moment to realise that it was pained, and then he understood.
It was not his chest she looked at. It was his shoulder, the left one, and the pistol scar raised stark and pale upon it.
"... Ah," he said, the weight of his understanding in his voice, and she looked back up at him with some defiance for it. "You would not have seen it before, of course. Yes, my lady. The mark is the result of your shot."
A squall of things passed across her expression then. He only understood about half of them. A strange, distant look came about her, and she reached up almost absently to touch the scar. Lightly. Only lightly. She pressed wondering fingers to the wound, laying her hand across it, and then seemed to freeze. To hold still, out of a strange, trembling mood, and simply look at her fingers there, pressed across the flesh she had torn. She seemed fragile, in that moment, and at the same time infinitely dangerous, as if she might shatter them both apart if startled wrongly.
Childermass let her stand. He had no reason not to. He did not startle her, nor refuse her, nor try to tease her mood apart. He simply held still beneath her hand, chilled and patient in the early morning light. It was only dawn yet. He had no pressing need to be anywhere.
"I hated you, you know," she said softly, after a moment. She did not look at him, still staring at her hand and the mark beneath it. He did not answer, content to let her explain herself in her own time. "Not on your account. I hated you for saving him. I hated you for stopping it, for being there, for dying when it wasn't your fault and leaving him free and blameless. I hated you for making me kill you, when the only one who deserved to die was him. I ... I hated you very much. I don't know if you knew that."
Childermass looked away, tilted his head back and raised his eyes to watch the ceiling, the golden light filtering across it. A small smile touched his mouth, wry and self-amused.
"I figured that," he said quietly. "Around the point where John Segundus grew a spine and Mr Honeyfoot threatened me with shooting a second time, I think I had an idea of your feelings towards me, my lady." He glanced back at her, slow and thoughtful. "Not necessarily the reasoning for it, mind. The emotion itself, though, I did notice that."
She swallowed faintly. Her hand, spread out across his shoulder, curled slowly into a fist, the points of her knuckles still pressed against his skin. Not hard, yet. For all her talk of hatred, for all her earlier and still unexplained anger, there was no thought of violence in her touch. He'd have known if there was. He had more than a passing acquaintance with the sensation. She looked up at him, a very pained sort of anger in her eyes, an echo of a quiet despair, and there was no violence in it.
"... Was he really worth saving?" she asked softly. "Was he worth dying for? You've done ... I don't like you very much, Mr Childermass, I don't think you're a nice man, but you've done so much since then. You've helped, and he ... How could he have been worth your life? How could he have been worth dying for?"
Childermass exhaled. He reached up, wrapped his fingers carefully around her wrist. She flinched, a little, at the cage of them. He did not hold too tightly. He did not remove her hand from his shoulder. He left it there, his wound beneath it. He only held her, a little bit, and tried to think how one might explain.
"... I gave my loyalty to him," he said at last, more than a little haltingly. It was a hard thing to explain even to himself, an emotion without words, and it did not like to be spoken of. Yet he had almost died, and she had almost killed him, and perhaps she had earned some effort on his part. "It was not for me to betray. Not first. While he had not betrayed me, while he fought for my cause however ... however hurtfully, it was not for me to betray him. Do you understand that? My life was only ... It was never the important thing. Not against what he meant."
Her lip curled, soft and bitter. Her arm tensed a little in his grasp. "Magic," she said, and from her the word was a curse. Not always. She had warmed to it in places since it had first destroyed her life. But his magic, Norrell's magic ... That was still a curse in her mouth. That was still a bitter word.
He did not shy from it. "Aye," he said, no more embarrassed for it than for his nakedness earlier. He had lived and died, quite literally, to see magic returned to England. He would never be ashamed of that. Of many things done to accomplish it, yes, but never for the thing itself. Magic was his life, as Mr Segundus had once said to him. There were few enough things he would not suffer in its cause.
She saw it. She looked away from it, closed her eyes and let her head fall a little in front of him. He could see her struggling. Not against him. Her wrist still sat quietly inside the cage of his fingers, her hand a loose and empty fist. She did not fight against him, but against something inside herself. A well of old pain, old hatred, old fury. A reserve of old grudges, very few of them unwarranted. She had so many reasons to hate. She had so many reasons for violence, against him not least of all. Yet she fought against it. He wondered vaguely at that. She had shot him only by accident, and for all she hated him she had never wished him harm since. She struggled against her anger, even now. He wondered what he had done to deserve that.
"... You helped bring me back," she said, after a long moment. She mastered herself, raised her head once more to meet his eyes with fierce composure. He blinked, a little. He did not quite know how to meet them. "You defied him to do it. You listened to Mr Strange, and you came with my finger, and you helped to bring me back. Why. Why were you so willing to let him do ... and then turn around? Why bring me back, when I had already shot you?"
He blinked some more. It was ... God. It was too early. It was too early in the morning, and he'd had too little sleep, and he didn't know how to answer these things. He was standing half-naked in his bedroom, for God's sake! What right had she to ask him these things at such a ...
But no. No. What was done was done, and Norrell had done it. Accidentally, Childermass believed, never with ill-intent, but the man had done it nonetheless, and Childermass had helped him. Unknowingly, but that did not excuse him. This woman had suffered through years of imprisonment, of a nightmare both waking and sleeping, and he had been complicit in it. The pistol ball had balanced the debt somewhat, laid the blame for each other's pain more squarely between them, but still. An explanation was not something he could in good conscience deny her. Not even at so ungodly an hour or in such an indecorous position.
He'd never cared much for them before, after all. God or decorum either.
"... I never had wish to harm you," he said at last. Very carefully. "Or much of anyone, for that matter. I did not know what he had done. I sensed the magic on you. I knew he had done something, something that lingered still, but I did not know of the fairy, or of your imprisonment. When Strange sent word, there seemed ..." He paused, looked briefly heavenward once again. His hand spasmed briefly around hers, his own internal struggle for a second. Then he said, very slowly and tiredly: "There seemed no cause to help a man hiding in his library rather than those he had hurt. There was a limit to loyalty. Perhaps there should not have been, but there was. So I came."
He did not look at her. He kept his eyes fixed to the ceiling beams above them, to the light that had begun to properly deepen and shine now. It must be close to breakfast time, he thought absently. They must be close to proper morning. He was very cold, too. He'd not had time to dry, and the chill had seeped with the water beneath his skin. More chills than one, perhaps. Older chills, ones that would not fade so easily by the donning of a shirt.
She pulled her arm gently from his grasp. Slowly, carefully in her turn. He let it go without comment, and without looking at her either. A man half-naked had few illusions to protect himself with. He did not quite dare to look just yet.
So he had no warning, no time to prepare, when her arms slipped suddenly around his waist. He more than half-flinched, stiff with shock, and she caught him tight. She pulled him to her, laid her head on the shoulder she had wounded, and curled her arms around his naked back. His own arms hung limp at his sides. He was too stunned, too helpless, to remember for a moment what to do with them.
"... I don't want to hate you," she whispered, from where her face was buried at his throat. He could feel her breathing there. He stared straight ahead, uncomprehending. "I didn't want to kill you. You weren't the man I wanted to shoot. I don't want you to bear a mark because of me. It's too late, though. What is done cannot be undone. You brought my finger back to me, but I cannot make this go away."
He could not answer for a second. There wasn't one. This was not ... There was no answer to that. There was pain between them, and it had marked them both, even if her scars were no longer physical. That could not be undone. As she said, some things could not be wiped away. There was no help for that. That was not the right thing to say, however. He knew that much, however vaguely.
And so he simply brought up a hand, instead, and rested it against her hair. He brought his arms around her, cradling her head where it lay upon his shoulder, and simply held her. Something it was not his place to do, something he had no right to, but she had held him first, and this was a pain they shared. This was a hurt they had done each other, and mayhap there was no-one else with a better right either.
"... We are not unmade," he said softly, after a moment. "We are not dead, my lady, despite anyone's efforts. What was done cannot be undone, but that does not mean it is the only thing we might do each other. I have no wish to hurt you. I would help you, if I may, should you need it henceforth. Perhaps that might ... repair some small part, of what was done between us?"
She did not answer immediately. She held still, tense and fragile and dangerous in his arms, her own wrapped securely around his back, such that if they shattered they would do so together. It was not entirely an unpleasing sensation. There was danger in it, there was the echo of old hurt and old hate, there was the chance it would go wrong and tear them both apart. Yet it was shared. It was a shared pain, a shared danger, and there was something in Childermass that found it a strangely restful feeling. There was something inside him that drew a measure of comfort, simply from the closeness of it.
Then she raised her head. Lady Pole, Emma Wintertowne, who had come closer than anyone in the world to destroying him. The woman who had almost killed him, and without ever having meant to. There was something amusing in that. A strange, cosmic joke, some figure from on high laughing soundlessly at them across the universe. There was a perfect sort of humour, that they should hold each other now.
"... I shall not hurt you again," she said quietly. "Not like that. Not for anyone else's crimes. The next time you are a boor to me or to my friends, I shall hit you of course, but ... but no more than that. I do not wish you harm. I do not think I have hated you for some time. I will not suffer you to be harmed again."
He blinked slowly at her. It was only his nakedness, he thought, it was only the nakedness and the closeness and strange, pained comfort of her nearness, but for a moment he very much wished to kiss her. There was something fierce in her, something dark and pained and unconquered, and to hear her speaking of harming him, of keeping him from being harmed, became ... He didn't know. Something wrong, untoward. Something he had no right to. Something he almost wished to take anyway. For the briefest of moments, he saw the darkness in her eyes, and wished nothing better than press his lips to hers.
She saw it. She saw something. He had no illusions, he had no defence, she had come to him too early. He was naked before her, and she saw. The world trembled on the edge of shattering, for that second. The danger in her surged to the fore, held shaking on the brink, and he almost didn't know if he wished it to shatter or not. She had shot him once. He would not welcome it again. Yet it would be better than some other, indefinable shattering, some breaking inside them that would wound him yet more deeply.
She did not break, however. Neither inwards nor outwards. She trembled on the edge of it, but then something changed inside her. She looked at him, a half-naked man caught shaking in her arms, her mark already on him, and something inside her transmuted itself. There came a flash of humour to her eyes, something wild and dark and laughing, and she pulled free her arms to bring her hands to his face instead. She cupped his cheeks, held him prisoned between her palms, and he saw in her a dark, unconquered thing that had no fear, and no violence either. She did not wish him harm. Even still, even now, she did not wish him harm.
"... You are a strange man, John Childermass," she told him seriously, with that light of humour still in her eyes. "You would die for magic and the sake of a stupid little man, and you would long for a woman who had almost killed you?"
He shrugged at that, a bubble of his own humour coming to the fore. It was not a baseless accusation. He had been accorded strange by more than her, and never for a better reason. Yet he did long for her, suddenly. He did yearn for that thing inside her, and the thing it had touched inside his own self. She had killed him, and he yearned for her still. There was a certain humour in that, he did acknowledge.
"In my defence," he noted mildly. "You did happen upon me in a state of undress, my lady. I am half-naked and in your arms. I'm sure there are much better men than me who might have their thoughts stray oddly in such circumstances."
Her expression changed at that. It became more thoughtful, more intent. She looked him, held his face between her hands and studied him, and it was not humour in her eyes. Not hatred, either, nor anything he understood. She held him, and then a deep, wry peace entered her eyes, and a warmth that seemed strangely just for him.
"No," she said, with an odd satisfaction. "No better men. No better men at all."
And then, with a soft and perfect aplomb, she leaned up to kiss him. He caught his arms around her, without thinking of it at all, and she kissed him happily between her hands. She reached up around him, pulled his head towards her, tangled her hands in his hair. He moaned softly, his mouth falling open beneath her ministrations, and she chased it laughingly back inside his mouth. He was not cold, suddenly. He was not cold in the least. Something dark and warm and laughing had filled him to the brim, and it had poured from out of her mouth. He crushed her to him, held her in his arms without a thought, and gladly drank all that she offered him down. He had no idea what had spurred her, no idea why she should so gladly offer him this, but he had no intention at all of refusing it. Not now, and perhaps not ever.
It was just as well, he thought distantly, that neither of them much cared for propriety any longer, for there was damned little of it to be found between them now. He truly did not care, however, and neither did she. Emma Pole had left those concerns behind her the moment she was sold, and she would not flinch from her desires any longer. Though he be a servant, though she be married, though he be the worst man on all the Earth, she had no care any longer.
Perhaps that was what he saw in her. Perhaps that was what they saw in each other, what they longed for, what brought that strange, dark comfort to their mutual pain. Perhaps that was why him, for all the worst reasons in the world.
Freedom was a heady thing, after all. Freedom was a warmth unlike any other. And there was, without doubt, a kind of freedom here.
A strange thing to come upon him of a morning, he thought dazedly. A strange thing to barge into his room and find him half-naked there. Yet he was not complaining. He looked at her, pulled back from her to see that thing inside her, and found a wild, half-mad thing to offer it in turn. He smiled at her, and she at him, with all their scars on proud display, and he thought no. No, he was most certainly not complaining at all. Fortunate, too. He thought she might well have hit him if he had. She had said so, and he would not ever doubt her. He was not such a boor as that, though.
Even if, at present, he was not being much of a gentleman either. She was not being much of a lady, and the both of them all the happier for that.
Propriety be hanged, he thought. Right now, they had much better things to be doing.
Disturbing a man in his room, almost before the sun was even up, was not particularly well-regarded behaviour for a young woman of quality. Emma Pole, however, as Childermass was beginning to realise, gave not one iota of care for such things any longer. He supposed he didn't entirely blame her for that. A reputation for illness and madness, and a variety of imprisonments both magical and mundane because of it, would not incline anyone to care very much for the society that had allowed them.
He still did not particularly care for the pleasure of having his room barged into, however. Especially not at the crack of dawn, and most especially not when he was half-stripped and in the middle of bathing. He generally did not care overmuch for propriety himself, but he did at least prefer to be clothed when greeting angry visitors. If nothing else, it gave an oft-useful illusion of dignity, whereas a man standing half-naked in his breeches allowed for very few illusions at all.
It did stop her in her tracks somewhat, though. Momentum carried her more than a foot into his room, but surprise stopped her almost immediately afterwards. She stared at him open-mouthed, momentarily distracted from whatever temper had driven her in here in the first place. He stared back, equally startled, cold water dripping down one arm from the sponge still held in his hand. His mind was entirely blank. He'd had a long, hard ride the night before, and it was too early in the morning by far for such visitations. And so, for a moment, neither of them moved, caught in a somewhat mutually stunned impasse.
Childermass recovered first. He had been company to magicians for years, after all. He'd have made a damned poor show of it if he couldn't muster himself in the face of surprise visitations.
"... Can I help you?" he managed. He lowered his arm, absently shoving the sponge back onto the wash stand. The dripping had started to become annoying. Lady Pole merely blinked at him, still mildly pole-axed. Really, Childermass didn't know what she had expected. A man was entitled to bathe in his own bloody rooms, after all. If she was going to come barging in at all hours, she could hardly be that surprised by it.
And she wasn't, he saw. Her eyes narrowed instantly as he spoke, temper still swimming below the surface a bit. So then. She had remembered herself, and her grudges also. He braced himself for whatever they might be. He'd only been back in Starecross half a night. He couldn't think off-hand how the devil he'd managed to offend her, when he hadn't even seen her yet this trip.
However he'd managed it, though, she didn't see fit to enlighten him just yet. She had regained the use of her senses, all right, but it seemed the lady had been wholly side-tracked regardless. She frowned, staring at something on his chest, and in defiance of all propriety came even further into his room, gazing intently at it all the while. Childermass blinked, mildly disconcerted, and turned to face her properly. He resisted the urge to cross his arms across his naked chest. He was hardly a blushing youth any longer, and if the lady wanted to see, she could look her fill. He was not John Segundus. He was not likely to shrink in embarrassment for it.
She came abreast of him, a somewhat odd expression on her face. She looked up at his face, a curiously intent look, and then back to his chest. "Is that ... Is that mine?" she asked, out of the blue, and for a good second he did not understand her. He looked down at his chest, almost to check, but there was nothing on it that might belong to her, or indeed anyone. There was nothing on it at all. Her expression was not prurient, however. It took him a moment to realise that it was pained, and then he understood.
It was not his chest she looked at. It was his shoulder, the left one, and the pistol scar raised stark and pale upon it.
"... Ah," he said, the weight of his understanding in his voice, and she looked back up at him with some defiance for it. "You would not have seen it before, of course. Yes, my lady. The mark is the result of your shot."
A squall of things passed across her expression then. He only understood about half of them. A strange, distant look came about her, and she reached up almost absently to touch the scar. Lightly. Only lightly. She pressed wondering fingers to the wound, laying her hand across it, and then seemed to freeze. To hold still, out of a strange, trembling mood, and simply look at her fingers there, pressed across the flesh she had torn. She seemed fragile, in that moment, and at the same time infinitely dangerous, as if she might shatter them both apart if startled wrongly.
Childermass let her stand. He had no reason not to. He did not startle her, nor refuse her, nor try to tease her mood apart. He simply held still beneath her hand, chilled and patient in the early morning light. It was only dawn yet. He had no pressing need to be anywhere.
"I hated you, you know," she said softly, after a moment. She did not look at him, still staring at her hand and the mark beneath it. He did not answer, content to let her explain herself in her own time. "Not on your account. I hated you for saving him. I hated you for stopping it, for being there, for dying when it wasn't your fault and leaving him free and blameless. I hated you for making me kill you, when the only one who deserved to die was him. I ... I hated you very much. I don't know if you knew that."
Childermass looked away, tilted his head back and raised his eyes to watch the ceiling, the golden light filtering across it. A small smile touched his mouth, wry and self-amused.
"I figured that," he said quietly. "Around the point where John Segundus grew a spine and Mr Honeyfoot threatened me with shooting a second time, I think I had an idea of your feelings towards me, my lady." He glanced back at her, slow and thoughtful. "Not necessarily the reasoning for it, mind. The emotion itself, though, I did notice that."
She swallowed faintly. Her hand, spread out across his shoulder, curled slowly into a fist, the points of her knuckles still pressed against his skin. Not hard, yet. For all her talk of hatred, for all her earlier and still unexplained anger, there was no thought of violence in her touch. He'd have known if there was. He had more than a passing acquaintance with the sensation. She looked up at him, a very pained sort of anger in her eyes, an echo of a quiet despair, and there was no violence in it.
"... Was he really worth saving?" she asked softly. "Was he worth dying for? You've done ... I don't like you very much, Mr Childermass, I don't think you're a nice man, but you've done so much since then. You've helped, and he ... How could he have been worth your life? How could he have been worth dying for?"
Childermass exhaled. He reached up, wrapped his fingers carefully around her wrist. She flinched, a little, at the cage of them. He did not hold too tightly. He did not remove her hand from his shoulder. He left it there, his wound beneath it. He only held her, a little bit, and tried to think how one might explain.
"... I gave my loyalty to him," he said at last, more than a little haltingly. It was a hard thing to explain even to himself, an emotion without words, and it did not like to be spoken of. Yet he had almost died, and she had almost killed him, and perhaps she had earned some effort on his part. "It was not for me to betray. Not first. While he had not betrayed me, while he fought for my cause however ... however hurtfully, it was not for me to betray him. Do you understand that? My life was only ... It was never the important thing. Not against what he meant."
Her lip curled, soft and bitter. Her arm tensed a little in his grasp. "Magic," she said, and from her the word was a curse. Not always. She had warmed to it in places since it had first destroyed her life. But his magic, Norrell's magic ... That was still a curse in her mouth. That was still a bitter word.
He did not shy from it. "Aye," he said, no more embarrassed for it than for his nakedness earlier. He had lived and died, quite literally, to see magic returned to England. He would never be ashamed of that. Of many things done to accomplish it, yes, but never for the thing itself. Magic was his life, as Mr Segundus had once said to him. There were few enough things he would not suffer in its cause.
She saw it. She looked away from it, closed her eyes and let her head fall a little in front of him. He could see her struggling. Not against him. Her wrist still sat quietly inside the cage of his fingers, her hand a loose and empty fist. She did not fight against him, but against something inside herself. A well of old pain, old hatred, old fury. A reserve of old grudges, very few of them unwarranted. She had so many reasons to hate. She had so many reasons for violence, against him not least of all. Yet she fought against it. He wondered vaguely at that. She had shot him only by accident, and for all she hated him she had never wished him harm since. She struggled against her anger, even now. He wondered what he had done to deserve that.
"... You helped bring me back," she said, after a long moment. She mastered herself, raised her head once more to meet his eyes with fierce composure. He blinked, a little. He did not quite know how to meet them. "You defied him to do it. You listened to Mr Strange, and you came with my finger, and you helped to bring me back. Why. Why were you so willing to let him do ... and then turn around? Why bring me back, when I had already shot you?"
He blinked some more. It was ... God. It was too early. It was too early in the morning, and he'd had too little sleep, and he didn't know how to answer these things. He was standing half-naked in his bedroom, for God's sake! What right had she to ask him these things at such a ...
But no. No. What was done was done, and Norrell had done it. Accidentally, Childermass believed, never with ill-intent, but the man had done it nonetheless, and Childermass had helped him. Unknowingly, but that did not excuse him. This woman had suffered through years of imprisonment, of a nightmare both waking and sleeping, and he had been complicit in it. The pistol ball had balanced the debt somewhat, laid the blame for each other's pain more squarely between them, but still. An explanation was not something he could in good conscience deny her. Not even at so ungodly an hour or in such an indecorous position.
He'd never cared much for them before, after all. God or decorum either.
"... I never had wish to harm you," he said at last. Very carefully. "Or much of anyone, for that matter. I did not know what he had done. I sensed the magic on you. I knew he had done something, something that lingered still, but I did not know of the fairy, or of your imprisonment. When Strange sent word, there seemed ..." He paused, looked briefly heavenward once again. His hand spasmed briefly around hers, his own internal struggle for a second. Then he said, very slowly and tiredly: "There seemed no cause to help a man hiding in his library rather than those he had hurt. There was a limit to loyalty. Perhaps there should not have been, but there was. So I came."
He did not look at her. He kept his eyes fixed to the ceiling beams above them, to the light that had begun to properly deepen and shine now. It must be close to breakfast time, he thought absently. They must be close to proper morning. He was very cold, too. He'd not had time to dry, and the chill had seeped with the water beneath his skin. More chills than one, perhaps. Older chills, ones that would not fade so easily by the donning of a shirt.
She pulled her arm gently from his grasp. Slowly, carefully in her turn. He let it go without comment, and without looking at her either. A man half-naked had few illusions to protect himself with. He did not quite dare to look just yet.
So he had no warning, no time to prepare, when her arms slipped suddenly around his waist. He more than half-flinched, stiff with shock, and she caught him tight. She pulled him to her, laid her head on the shoulder she had wounded, and curled her arms around his naked back. His own arms hung limp at his sides. He was too stunned, too helpless, to remember for a moment what to do with them.
"... I don't want to hate you," she whispered, from where her face was buried at his throat. He could feel her breathing there. He stared straight ahead, uncomprehending. "I didn't want to kill you. You weren't the man I wanted to shoot. I don't want you to bear a mark because of me. It's too late, though. What is done cannot be undone. You brought my finger back to me, but I cannot make this go away."
He could not answer for a second. There wasn't one. This was not ... There was no answer to that. There was pain between them, and it had marked them both, even if her scars were no longer physical. That could not be undone. As she said, some things could not be wiped away. There was no help for that. That was not the right thing to say, however. He knew that much, however vaguely.
And so he simply brought up a hand, instead, and rested it against her hair. He brought his arms around her, cradling her head where it lay upon his shoulder, and simply held her. Something it was not his place to do, something he had no right to, but she had held him first, and this was a pain they shared. This was a hurt they had done each other, and mayhap there was no-one else with a better right either.
"... We are not unmade," he said softly, after a moment. "We are not dead, my lady, despite anyone's efforts. What was done cannot be undone, but that does not mean it is the only thing we might do each other. I have no wish to hurt you. I would help you, if I may, should you need it henceforth. Perhaps that might ... repair some small part, of what was done between us?"
She did not answer immediately. She held still, tense and fragile and dangerous in his arms, her own wrapped securely around his back, such that if they shattered they would do so together. It was not entirely an unpleasing sensation. There was danger in it, there was the echo of old hurt and old hate, there was the chance it would go wrong and tear them both apart. Yet it was shared. It was a shared pain, a shared danger, and there was something in Childermass that found it a strangely restful feeling. There was something inside him that drew a measure of comfort, simply from the closeness of it.
Then she raised her head. Lady Pole, Emma Wintertowne, who had come closer than anyone in the world to destroying him. The woman who had almost killed him, and without ever having meant to. There was something amusing in that. A strange, cosmic joke, some figure from on high laughing soundlessly at them across the universe. There was a perfect sort of humour, that they should hold each other now.
"... I shall not hurt you again," she said quietly. "Not like that. Not for anyone else's crimes. The next time you are a boor to me or to my friends, I shall hit you of course, but ... but no more than that. I do not wish you harm. I do not think I have hated you for some time. I will not suffer you to be harmed again."
He blinked slowly at her. It was only his nakedness, he thought, it was only the nakedness and the closeness and strange, pained comfort of her nearness, but for a moment he very much wished to kiss her. There was something fierce in her, something dark and pained and unconquered, and to hear her speaking of harming him, of keeping him from being harmed, became ... He didn't know. Something wrong, untoward. Something he had no right to. Something he almost wished to take anyway. For the briefest of moments, he saw the darkness in her eyes, and wished nothing better than press his lips to hers.
She saw it. She saw something. He had no illusions, he had no defence, she had come to him too early. He was naked before her, and she saw. The world trembled on the edge of shattering, for that second. The danger in her surged to the fore, held shaking on the brink, and he almost didn't know if he wished it to shatter or not. She had shot him once. He would not welcome it again. Yet it would be better than some other, indefinable shattering, some breaking inside them that would wound him yet more deeply.
She did not break, however. Neither inwards nor outwards. She trembled on the edge of it, but then something changed inside her. She looked at him, a half-naked man caught shaking in her arms, her mark already on him, and something inside her transmuted itself. There came a flash of humour to her eyes, something wild and dark and laughing, and she pulled free her arms to bring her hands to his face instead. She cupped his cheeks, held him prisoned between her palms, and he saw in her a dark, unconquered thing that had no fear, and no violence either. She did not wish him harm. Even still, even now, she did not wish him harm.
"... You are a strange man, John Childermass," she told him seriously, with that light of humour still in her eyes. "You would die for magic and the sake of a stupid little man, and you would long for a woman who had almost killed you?"
He shrugged at that, a bubble of his own humour coming to the fore. It was not a baseless accusation. He had been accorded strange by more than her, and never for a better reason. Yet he did long for her, suddenly. He did yearn for that thing inside her, and the thing it had touched inside his own self. She had killed him, and he yearned for her still. There was a certain humour in that, he did acknowledge.
"In my defence," he noted mildly. "You did happen upon me in a state of undress, my lady. I am half-naked and in your arms. I'm sure there are much better men than me who might have their thoughts stray oddly in such circumstances."
Her expression changed at that. It became more thoughtful, more intent. She looked him, held his face between her hands and studied him, and it was not humour in her eyes. Not hatred, either, nor anything he understood. She held him, and then a deep, wry peace entered her eyes, and a warmth that seemed strangely just for him.
"No," she said, with an odd satisfaction. "No better men. No better men at all."
And then, with a soft and perfect aplomb, she leaned up to kiss him. He caught his arms around her, without thinking of it at all, and she kissed him happily between her hands. She reached up around him, pulled his head towards her, tangled her hands in his hair. He moaned softly, his mouth falling open beneath her ministrations, and she chased it laughingly back inside his mouth. He was not cold, suddenly. He was not cold in the least. Something dark and warm and laughing had filled him to the brim, and it had poured from out of her mouth. He crushed her to him, held her in his arms without a thought, and gladly drank all that she offered him down. He had no idea what had spurred her, no idea why she should so gladly offer him this, but he had no intention at all of refusing it. Not now, and perhaps not ever.
It was just as well, he thought distantly, that neither of them much cared for propriety any longer, for there was damned little of it to be found between them now. He truly did not care, however, and neither did she. Emma Pole had left those concerns behind her the moment she was sold, and she would not flinch from her desires any longer. Though he be a servant, though she be married, though he be the worst man on all the Earth, she had no care any longer.
Perhaps that was what he saw in her. Perhaps that was what they saw in each other, what they longed for, what brought that strange, dark comfort to their mutual pain. Perhaps that was why him, for all the worst reasons in the world.
Freedom was a heady thing, after all. Freedom was a warmth unlike any other. And there was, without doubt, a kind of freedom here.
A strange thing to come upon him of a morning, he thought dazedly. A strange thing to barge into his room and find him half-naked there. Yet he was not complaining. He looked at her, pulled back from her to see that thing inside her, and found a wild, half-mad thing to offer it in turn. He smiled at her, and she at him, with all their scars on proud display, and he thought no. No, he was most certainly not complaining at all. Fortunate, too. He thought she might well have hit him if he had. She had said so, and he would not ever doubt her. He was not such a boor as that, though.
Even if, at present, he was not being much of a gentleman either. She was not being much of a lady, and the both of them all the happier for that.
Propriety be hanged, he thought. Right now, they had much better things to be doing.
