debut

[aspecialkindofwoman]

The carriage ride to the coast hardly registered despite the state of the road. She had too much on her mind. There had been something there. She knew it. She knew that she had gotten through to him, too. How he kissed her, how he looked at her was enough to tell him that what had once thrived between them was not entirely dead.

And yet, he did not come. She berated herself for even thinking that he would have. She was a fool. Just the kind of woman she would have no respect for. But there had been a chance. She had meant what she said, too, about wanting to be something else. Wanting to be the woman she had been with him.

It seems he had not wanted the same. And she had to face that. When she feels the carriage slow, the woman known as Milady de Winter steps out of the carriage … and into some place she has never been before, an opulent hallway, of some design she has not seen. People walk past dressed in all manner of clothing, much even by her standards to be considered scandalous. She takes a moment, leaning a shoulder against the wall as she attempts to get her bearings.

Where is she? When she turns, there is no carriage behind her, but more of this hallway. A door, when tried, is locked. Where is she? As one unused to being in situations she cannot control, she watches for a long moment before she begins to walk, looking by habit as if she has always been here, even if she is scrambling for clues as to where she is and what she is to do.

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[aspecialkindofwoman]

The way he says her name urges her forward, a few more steps to where they nearly touch, to where they nearly share the same air. She doesn't understand this either - this place, how they can be from different times - but she cannot admit that, admit such a weakness.

"I do not have to be what you think I am," she murmurs. "I have not lied about what you think I have, Athos." About Thomas. About what happened that day so long ago.

[armedagainstlove]

It is not the right thing to say. Athos stiffens suddenly at the reminder of why there is an ocean of icy distance between them and he remembers the tomb, the way Thomas had been so cold. His wife had killed his brother, then she had escaped hanging by seducing Remy. It all makes his head turn with grief and his stomach follow, until he casts his head to the side, to avoid her gaze.

"I am afraid proof has been incontrovertible as to who you are," he informs her, as if upset and determined to trust to what he knows. "Who do you work for?"

[aspecialkindofwoman]

Jaw stiffening as she refuses to drop it, she steps back. "No one," she says quietly, defiantly. "I do not work for anyone."

Proof is only incontrovertible if he continues to see the truth of what his brother was, that streak of cruelty and entitlement.

[armedagainstlove]

"Then you are doing what you do on your own? What you did to La Fère, what you try to do to me?" Athos wonders if that is not worse. Perhaps he could blame it on a benefactor, if she were to work for someone else's wicked means.

[aspecialkindofwoman]

Her mouth opens, then closes and she sighs, looking away down the hall. "That ... that was a different time." When she was endebted to the Cardinal. "Now, I do not work for anyone. And I will not again."

[armedagainstlove]

He does not dare take his eyes off of her. Perhaps because she will slip away or perhaps simply because he does not know if he trusts himself to look away. "And you were to meet me and we were to go to England. Away from Paris and my duty?" he says it again and again, it does not make sense to him.

[aspecialkindofwoman]

"Perhaps. I told you where I would be and when to meet me." Her shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. "You had not come by the time I was leaving. Perhaps," she says, meeting his gaze, "you were not going to come."

And that idea hurts a good deal more than she would like to admit; it shows her face too and she, for once, doesn't bother to mask it.

[armedagainstlove]

It is too much to cope with and handle. Athos cannot do this any longer, cannot listen to truths or lies or whatever she is saying. He is too weary to discern between them. Pushing away from his perch near the wall, he does little more than afford her one last look before he walks down the hall without a word of parting, thinking he needs a drink more than ever before.

[aspecialkindofwoman]

There is too much pride in Milady to follow. She stands there, understanding this place no better than she did before.

If they are both trapped here, though, perhaps they will cross paths again. It is their fate, isn't it?

They are bound to each other after all.