Impatience

[touchedinthehead]

Aldaras doesn't bring up the knife with Annie again, nor his sister, or various ways she could be hurt. Annie has homework, so she doesn't stay at his apartment too long. He goes back to having nothing to do - there's some more pacing, some quiet freaking out over Annie and her safety, and then he distracts himself with obsessive preparation for taking care of the knife.

He'll - pack with the assumption that he can save his sister. There's lots of non-perishable food, packing as much as possible with the least amount of weight. Water, too, but that one's a bit harder. It's always heavy. Whatever, that's fine, he'll just - obsessively pack some more things. Pack, pack, pack.

Predictably, he runs out of things to do. Except think. Which has become something of a minefield, lately. To keep him from doing something stupid. He can't think about Zevaia, can't think about the knife, can't think about the Dean and how insanely long it's taking him to get the smallest tidbits of information out of him. He can't think too much about obsessive ways to make sure Annie's safe, for fear of becoming some kind of psychotic, controlling stalker or something.

But trying to not think about Annie is a recipe for failure or insanity, so he distracts himself with - what ifs. What would have happened if he'd met her without the necklace's and tracker's side effects combination, what he would have done if she'd asked him to kiss her...

That helps the time pass by faster.

Comments

[touchedinthehead]

That's - Aldaras doesn't really know how to feel about that, but they seem happy, so he's just - not going to draw attention to it. He makes a complicated face, instead.

And then he realizes that actually managing to beat the knife is salient information. "Sintre," he says, carefully, "I need to go tell my keeper how we just did it. Watch the knife, please?"

[alicornucopia]

"Sure, I'll wait right here," Sintre says, sitting down.

[touchedinthehead]

"Thanks."

He goes off to go do that, as quickly as is possible without injury. Zevaia follows. They reach the town reasonably quickly, and he asks for a phone and dials Annie's number.

[keep_busy]

"Salutations?"

[touchedinthehead]

"Salutations, it's me - we did it, cut people are now uncut and -" Pause. His voice breaks just a little, and becomes somewhat gooey. "I missed you very much."

[keep_busy]

"Oh thank goodness - is your sister okay - what's going to happen to the knife - when do you think you'll be back?"

[touchedinthehead]

"She's fine, the knife's already in cement and we're trying to figure out what to do with it, and - I don't know yet."

[keep_busy]

"Okay. Well, I'll see you when you get back. Anything else I need to know?"

[touchedinthehead]

"I - there were two uncut people who did the - love thing. They nearly immediately started cuddling and then making out shortly after. I am kind of conflicted about it in general."

[keep_busy]

"Well - did they seem happy?"

[touchedinthehead]

"Yes," he says, carefully.

[keep_busy]

"So - that's good, I guess."

[touchedinthehead]

"I - yeah."

[keep_busy]

She doesn't ask, because it's a lot harder to figure out how he'd feel about being asked on the phone.

[touchedinthehead]

He knows he has things to do and he probably hang up the phone now, but... He missed her. It was harder to notice when he was so focused on dealing with the knife, but - now that it's taken care of, he missed her so much.

"How are you?" he asks, his voice all - gentle and soft and sort of oozing, 'I am in love with you.'

[keep_busy]

"I'm fine. I'm so glad you got the knife," she sighs. "Do you want me to tell the department for you? They might be in a good position to get a path cleared between you and someplace you can get a boat, so you don't have to carry it past people who aren't protected and will try to get at it even while it's wrapped up."

[touchedinthehead]

"That'd be great, there's also some injured uncut, and - they don't feel any sort of pain. The department should probably know that, and - honestly I should go find doctors or something to look at them all."

[keep_busy]

"If there's nothing else you have to tell me don't let me keep you."

[touchedinthehead]

"I do genuinely want to keep talking to you," he says, softly. "But if you'd like me to shoo, I do have things to do so I won't be - weird or unbearably upset or anything."

[keep_busy]

"I'm not busy," she says. "But you're busy. It's up to you what ratio of hanging out on the phone versus, I don't know, attending the hasty wedding of the happy couple or calling the bounty posters who now owe you money or whatever, you should be doing."

[touchedinthehead]

"I - well, yes. I should probably be doing those sorts of things." Pause. "... I missed you a lot, are you okay?"

[keep_busy]

"I'm fine," she assures him. "Why wouldn't I be fine?"

[touchedinthehead]

"I - this is really stupid, but there was a - person earlier, who touched a new artifact and it made him say something kind of horrific and there was no reasonable way he could have known it. It was sort of scary, I'm - glad you're okay."

[keep_busy]

"Do you want to tell me what he said?"

This is different from asking outright? Isn't it? Maybe?

[touchedinthehead]

"Basically that everything with the knife was going to go horrifically wrong and that I was a failure and wouldn't be able to either save my sister, or keep you from -" He winces, making an audible little pained sound. "- being cut."