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[anewlanguage]

[Cain is aware what day it is and, as you probably guessed, he's drunk. Plastered. In the garden, twirling a ripped-off stick deftly between his fingers. He only slips at the end when he's meant to catch it.

He sings, too, as he's wont to do.]

...but I've still got my health, so what do I care?
My best friend, alas, is a glass solitaire,
but I still got my health, so what do I care?

By fashion and foppery, I'm never discussed.
Attending the opry, my box would be a bust....


[ooc: feel free to catch him in the gardens, the halls, wherever. I'm not bothering with much continuity, it's a free for all.]

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[anewlanguage]

[That's not a bad plan. Not one he's kid-at-Christmas excited to do, either, but he has little enthusiasm for any long-term plan right now. So he does what he's been doing: he focuses on the past, and on the immediate moment.]

She said 'No'.

[routemistress]

[Iris still half-wishes he wouldn't, although she does get why he does - and it's true that Cass made that first crack in him, the one that makes it possible for her, for anything else he's ever going to care about, to get in. She's not in the slightest bit surprised by his answer.]

She would. She's a girl that makes up 'er own mind no matter what. Break 'er and she breaks you right back.

[She says it neutrally, neither praise nor blame: an observation only, but she draws close, sliding an arm around him, while she says it. It's a silent assertion, not that everything's all right - it's not, but this, here and now: this is unconditional, this is all right.]

[anewlanguage]

She learned that all on her own.

[Even though Cain is exactly the same way, Cassandra took the lesson her own unique direction. He sighs heavily, and lays his head on her shoulder.

For right now, he'll accept comfort, even if he hasn't stopped pretending he doesn't need it.]

[routemistress]

[There are a number of things Iris might say, ranging from children do that no matter what to what did you expect to shhh, it's all right, but none of them would be both true and comforting, so she keeps her silence and holds him.

What is true is that she loves him; another thing she doesn't say aloud. Shaping words around it makes it a question that needs an answer, a game with changed rules, and she rather thinks they're both better off without rules or answers - and while her instincts want to distract him away from the grief today's making him dwell on, that feels selfish, perhaps disrespectful, and she chooses not to try.

She holds him, not because he needs comfort but because she wants to; because of the solid strength of him against her, because of the tired power in his bones, because of the scent of his skin against the cool air of the night garden. Not because nothing else matters: it all matters and they both know it - but because this matters, too.]