Mira had discovered the roof access sometime in her second week at Solmere, a narrow maintenance stair tucked behind the West Hall laundry room that nobody else seemed to know about or care to use, and had claimed it, quietly and without announcement, as the one place at the academy that belonged entirely to her. She was there on a cold evening nearly four months into the term when she heard footsteps on the stair below. She did not need to look to know who it was.
TLN: I hope you don't mind.
MRA: How did you find this?
TLN: I followed you. Twice. I wasn't going to say anything, but I got tired of pretending I didn't know where you disappeared to most evenings.
He said it plainly, without apology, and settled himself a respectful distance away along the roof's low parapet, his gaze turning out toward the same dark harbor she'd been watching, the water catching what little light the clouded sky permitted.
MRA: You could have just asked.
TLN: Would you have said yes?
She considered this honestly.
MRA: Probably not.
TLN: There you go, then.
A small, reluctant huff of amusement escaped her, quickly suppressed, and they sat in silence for a while, the wind moving cold and steady across the rooftop, the distant noise of the academy grounds below muffled into something almost peaceful from this height.
TLN: Can I ask you something?
MRA: You're going to whether I agree or not.
TLN: That's fair. I'll ask anyway.
He turned to look at her properly, his usual composed features carrying something more careful than his typical quiet stillness.
TLN: The duel. Weeks ago. You said I was supposed to try, and I said I couldn't.
MRA: I remember.
TLN: I don't think I ever explained why properly.
Mira glanced at him, something guarded settling behind her pale eyes, the particular defensive stillness she brought to conversations that threatened to go somewhere she hadn't chosen.
MRA: You don't have to.
TLN: I know. I want to anyway.
He looked back out at the harbor, gathering something, and when he spoke again, his voice had lost some of its usual careful control.
TLN: I've spent most of my life standing beside Corin. Watching people look at him first, always, the way people look at anyone born into something enormous. I don't resent it. I chose it, in a way, choosing to stay close to someone who was always going to be looked at before I was.
MRA: What does that have to do with the duel?
TLN: I'm getting there.
He allowed himself a small, self-deprecating smile.
TLN: You're the first person here who didn't look at either of us first. You looked past both of us, mostly, the way you look past most things, and I found I didn't mind it. I found I rather liked it, actually, being someone you had to be coaxed into noticing rather than someone noticed automatically because of who I stand beside.
Mira was quiet for a long moment, processing this, her hands folded carefully in her lap.
MRA: And that's why you couldn't fight me.
TLN: That's part of it. I think, somewhere in the middle of that duel, I understood that hurting you, even in play, even with a padded blade, would have meant treating you like everyone else treats you. Like something to be handled carefully from a distance, or overcome, or managed. I didn't want to be one more person who approached you that way.
The wind shifted, carrying the distant sound of the harbor bells, and Mira, sitting very still beside him, felt something in her chest loosen slightly, the particular careful unclenching of a guard held too long out of habit rather than necessity.
MRA: You don't know what it's like. Being looked at the way I'm looked at.
TLN: No. I don't. I wasn't trying to claim I did.
MRA: I know. I'm not accusing you of anything. I just need you to understand something, before this conversation goes any further.
She turned to face him fully now, her pale eyes catching what little light the clouded sky offered, the faint iridescent sheen along her cheekbones shifting subtly with the movement.
MRA: I am not simply an outsider here, Talon. I understand that word. I have heard it applied to Arthur, and I understand what it means when people use it for him, someone who does not fit the shape the world expected of him. But I am something else. I am an outsider among outsiders, someone who does not fully belong even among the people who do not fully belong, because I am not only unlike the ordinary students who were born with the ordinary gifts of ordinary souls. I am unlike the other monsterkind too, half of something and half of something else, too human for the tribes my mother's blood comes from, and too strange, still, despite everything, for the humans whose approval I was never actually seeking in the first place.
She said it evenly, without self-pity, the particular careful precision of someone who had turned the thought over so many times in private that it had worn itself smooth, and Talon, listening, did not interrupt, did not offer easy comfort, simply sat with the weight of it beside her.
MRA: I have spent my whole life learning exactly how much of myself to show people, and when, and to whom, because showing too much, too soon, has never once gone well for me. So when you say you didn't want to be one more person who approached me carefully, from a distance, I need you to understand that careful, distant approach is the only kind that has ever actually kept me safe.
TLN: I understand.
MRA: I don't think you fully do. Not yet.
TLN: Maybe not. I'd like to, though. If you'll let me try.
She studied him for a long moment, the wind moving cold between them, the harbor dark and distant below, and something in his patient, unhurried expression, the total absence of any demand in it, settled slowly into something she recognized, with quiet surprise, as trust.
MRA: You can keep following me up here. If you like.
TLN: I'd like that.
MRA: But you have to keep being patient. I don't know how to be anything other than careful yet. I'm not certain I ever will.
TLN: I have nowhere else I need to be.
He said it simply, and Mira, looking at him in the cold, clouded evening light, found herself, for the first time in longer than she could properly account for, entirely unable to summon the guardedness she usually kept close at hand, and did not try particularly hard to find it again. They sat together on the rooftop as the evening deepened further, the harbor bells sounding faintly again in the distance, and said little else, needing little else, the particular quiet, patient orbit they'd settled into finally, tentatively, beginning to close its distance by the smallest possible degree.