Even if she's not surprised, she finds herself nettled into a flush of frustration, even as everything sidelines for the young boy. All dinner-plate wide eyes and voice rushed like if he didn't get all his words out fast enough, this chance would pass him by, and Luther would vanish before his eyes.
Your biggest.
How many million times. How many different faces. How many different voices and countries and people had said those words? They're almost irrelevant in their own way, too, but whatever it is in her center grows a scattering of unexpected thorns pricking her as the words repeat in her head. So close to another set, written more than once. So close to a truth that hasn't been true ...
... for as long as the boy so easily points out they've been apart.
Luther's smile catches, freezes, dims on his lips, and she wonders if he doesn't know how much of everything out here still rides on that. If it's her name that makes his face shutter closed so briefly. The name she's supposed to have put away, with her costume and all those memories, when she left the Academy.
Her smiled might have briefly faltered among it all, but it puts itself back up on the wall right. The way her father expected them always to remain. Resolutely. The way this city expected of everything. Unerringly. The two had blended here since she arrived. The coattails she could neither hide nor ignore. Not when they opened so many doors and turned on so many cameras.
All she had to do was be gracious.
And lie through her teeth about the world she left. As though everyone understands. (As though she hadn't lost anything.)
Her regained smile was a peerless thing, gracious and amused, even if it's one she's still practicing in the mirror for longer than she'd admit. That she'll keep doing until it's effortless. Until she can manage it just as well as anyone here. That gracious delight at any interruption anywhere that had never been needed in her childhood.
no subject
Your biggest.
How many million times. How many different faces. How many different voices and countries and people had said those words? They're almost irrelevant in their own way, too, but whatever it is in her center grows a scattering of unexpected thorns pricking her as the words repeat in her head. So close to another set, written more than once. So close to a truth that hasn't been true ...
... for as long as the boy so easily points out they've been apart.
Luther's smile catches, freezes, dims on his lips, and she wonders if he doesn't know how much of everything out here still rides on that. If it's her name that makes his face shutter closed so briefly. The name she's supposed to have put away, with her costume and all those memories, when she left the Academy.
Her smiled might have briefly faltered among it all, but it puts itself back up on the wall right. The way her father expected them always to remain. Resolutely. The way this city expected of everything. Unerringly. The two had blended here since she arrived. The coattails she could neither hide nor ignore. Not when they opened so many doors and turned on so many cameras.
All she had to do was be gracious.
And lie through her teeth about the world she left.
As though everyone understands. (As though she hadn't lost anything.)
Her regained smile was a peerless thing, gracious and amused, even if it's one she's still practicing in the mirror for longer than she'd admit. That she'll keep doing until it's effortless. Until she can manage it just as well as anyone here. That gracious delight at any interruption anywhere that had never been needed in her childhood.
"Of course. Who should we make it out to?"