Thomas Corvin ♖ Jest (jesting) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2019-05-09 20:54:00 |
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After the strange text conversation with his mother and the familiarly eerie drawings on his classroom whiteboard, Thomas was very glad for the advent of the weekend. Even though- because of those very things- it seemed he had some things to talk over with Calliope, and they were things that might not be comfortable or pleasant or even happy, but were necessary all the same. Despite recent dream-events, he really wasn't in the habit of keeping things from his wife. Calliope had been his greatest confidante for a very long time, so keeping anything from her- especially something like those pervasive dreams- was… uncomfortable, to say the least. He closed the front door to their house behind him, hanging his messenger bag on a hook and slipping off his shoes. Thomas didn't call out, but neither did he really make any effort to conceal his movements. He headed toward the kitchen, but didn't see Calliope there, so instead turned toward the living room. He hadn't heard the TV or radio, but… She was there, lying on the sofa, one arm tucked under her head. Thomas paused there for just a moment, taking in the sight of her- something was wrong, because the sunshine had started to leave her eyes. But she was still heart-stoppingly beautiful all the same. Crossing the room, Thomas wordlessly held a hand out to Calliope. She looked confused, but took it, and he pulled her to a seated position just so he could maneuver his way onto the sofa there with her- stretching his legs out behind where she'd been and lying down, tugging her with him this time as he lay back. His arms wrapped around her, and he pressed a gentle kiss to her hair. "I love you, Calliope Corvin." -- After her conversation with Elisabeth that morning, Calliope’s worries had eased slightly, but it had unfortunately not made her feel any less adrift than before. She didn’t want to sleep because then Cath’s mother would haunt her just as much as the memory of her own mother. She had avoided letting herself step onto any scales, and she though she had gone into the kitchen earlier in the day, she never had gotten out any supplied to bake. Even video editing or working on writing a piece for her blog had eluded her interests, and it became apparent she was taking a mental health day whether she wanted to or not. Somehow, she’d ended up back on the sofa, curled up and staring...contemplating. Calliope even heard the door open, but she couldn’t muster the voice to call out to tell Thomas where she was. He found her soon enough, and wordlessly let him pull her into a seated position. In just the space of a few moments, he had slipped onto the couch with her, and Calliope shifted so that she was facing him when he pulled her back down with him. She wondered briefly if Elisabeth had told him that she was upset...and why. She slipped her arm around him, tucking her head against his chest and breathing him in as she closed her eyes. She felt that brush of his lips against her hair, and the reassurance of his love made her heart thud against her ribs, “I love you, too.” After seven years together, it was even truer than it had ever been. Her love for him had just grown over time. “Today wasn’t a great day,” she admitted, though what exactly she was going to tell him about the why wasn’t clear to her just yet. -- He hadn't so much as begun to doubt that Calliope still returned that sentiment, but Thomas still smiled to hear her words all the same. The admission that followed was expected, but no less important in its own right. "Mom told me," he offered, but then clarified, "well, she said I had to give you a hug, anyway. Three, actually- one each from her and dad, and one from me. So this is the one from me," a faint smile tugged at his lips as he tightened his arms around her for a moment, "and you'll get the other two whenever we decide to move." Which could have been in five minutes or five hours. He wouldn't mind it either way. He was quiet for a moment, then finally added, "It was a bit rough on my end, too." -- She tried to remain relaxed when he said that Elisabeth told him she had a rough day, but her muscles tensed slightly. It wasn't upsetting or surprising that she had reached out to Thomas, but not knowing what she had said gave Calliope momentary pause. As he continued, she relaxed again and smiled slightly as he tightened his arms around her, "We aren't moving for a little while, I think, but I'll accept all the hugs." At his admission, she pulled away just enough that she could look up at him, worry written on her features, "Yeah? Do you want to talk about it?" Their embrace, she hoped, was serving to make him feel a little better, too. Maybe that wasn't enough to clear his mind, though. --- "We don't have to move until you want to," Thomas agreed, easily. He kept his arms around Calliope, feeling mostly content for... probably the first time that day, at least since he'd left the house that morning. Though he knew he had to talk about it, Thomas still hesitated for likely too long when the question was posed. Even though he'd seen people talking about these dreams on the town's network for a while now, that they were really happening to him was unsettling, to say the least. "I've been having some... odd dreams," he hedged, slowly. -- He didn’t have to say anything at all, but she could see that he was considering it. She realized that if he admitted whatever problem was bothering him, she would likely do the same in return and it wasn’t going to be an easy conversation to have. Though she hadn’t been oblivious to the talks on the network about strange dreams involving impossible people, she had never heard of Catherine Pinkerton before whereas most of the other names she’d heard in passing had been familiar in some way. His words startled her a little, and it must have showed because her eyes widened a little and she felt her heart begin to race. There was a breath of time where she gathered her wits, and then finally admitted, “So have I. They’re...unsettling.” -- Her return admission was far from expected, and Thomas lifted his head slightly to look at her- but then fell back against the sofa's pillows with an exhale that was almost a laugh. "Well, at least we're losing our minds together, anyway." Unsettling, though, was certainly a good word for it. "Mine started in February. I definitely wrote them off as odd or coincidences for a while, but today was…" Thomas stared up at the ceiling, those drawings still fresh in his mind. "That's what kept me late at school. I… heard some things from the dreams and they… left me feeling a bit wary of- well, of doors." It sounded even more strange when said aloud. -- Her dreams had brought a lot of her existing insecurities - ones that she had thought long-buried - roaring back to the surface. Was that madness? While she was relieved to finally understand that it was likely these dreams that were bothering him and not something else, it still didn’t completely ease her mind. She tucked away those small pieces of information, a small frown on her lips, “Doors? Like...being uncertain of what you’ll find on the other side?” She hadn’t yet had any reason to fear doors, though Calliope just barely refrained from telling Thomas that someone in her dreams reminded her an awful lot of him. “Mine started in March,” she gave a small sigh. Perhaps things wouldn’t have gotten so bad if she’d just told him about hers from the beginning. Maybe they both would have had better days if those burdens had been shared, “I haven’t had many of consequence...but they hit a little too close to home. It brings up things better left in the past.” -- "Something like that. In the dream I- he was… shown his fate. And it… wasn't a fortunate one. But he could avoid it if he didn't go through a door?" Thomas shook his head. "I know it sounds mad, Calliope. Believe me. His fate isn't mine, and I know that." Keeping these things from her hadn't been the best choice, though it had seemed the right one at the time. "Some of mine have, too. The… woman he loved chose another man." Thomas determinedly stared back up at the ceiling, silently repeating those same words he'd just said aloud. His fate isn't mine, and I know that. -- She listened carefully to his words as he spoke, and for some reason…they struck a chord with her. Every cell in her body was screaming for him not to go through a door...not to exit...from somewhere. A tunnel? She shuddered a little and held onto him more tightly, "It doesn't sound as mad as you might think." At his confession that his dream love - should she be jealous he had one? - had chosen another, she pulled back enough to meet his gaze properly, "You are always my choice. You always were." She knew that she'd made a mistake all those years ago in ever allowing herself to go on those chaperoned dinners with Ramsey Asquith, but she had thought back then…perhaps her mother would come around if she thought she was making an effort to do things her way first. She settled back down, staring at the collar of his shirt, her mind still jumbled, "I almost bought a grapefruit today." She had not eaten one since just after her 21st birthday…since before they'd married, "She's in my head again, Thomas. Both of them…my mother and her mother, too." -- Maybe she was right. If he was mad, then the whole town was, too. Which he wouldn't entirely rule out, but maybe he could err on the side of hope, for now. Thomas looked back up at Calliope as she shifted, and a small smile tugged at his lips. "I know that," he affirmed, easily. And he did. For all that Thomas spoke of his unnatural luck in having married her or even having convinced her to stick with him at all, he hadn't doubted her even once since that Calliope Freedom Day. They were irrefutable. Grapefruit. The citrus had been summarily banned for years now, though Thomas still remembered well enough how Calliope had told him that she'd been allowed to eat little more than that, when her mother controlled her. He wished that he could banish Isolda Pemberton to the ends of the earth- or at least far away from Calliope's mind- but it was a hopeless sort of thing. Her claws ran deep, and they weren't easily extricated, even with time and an overwhelming amount of love. "That's why you called mom, then," he guessed- an easy conclusion, if she was otherwise dealing with two Isoldas. "You're utterly perfect, though, Calliope. You always have been. Those things she saw as flaws only make me love you even more." -- She nodded slowly, though she was still tucked in close to his side, “I needed to talk to a mother that actually loves me.” It was a simple sort of statement, but still not an easy one to say. The rest of the Corvin family had accepted her so readily...so enthusiastically. She’d never had to earn their trust and love because it had been freely offered, and that had been such a foreign concept to her. She had thought surely she would have to do something to bring them around, but that had never been the case. Calliope considered the two mothers that took up space in her mind and their criticism of every little thing she did or said. Her laugh was indelicate or her smile made her eyes crease too much or her weight was obscene, even when her bones jutted from her thin frame. She wouldn’t argue with his assessment, but it was easier said than done to banish the ill thoughts from her mind, “I hate how these things resurfacing make me hesitate like I used to. I’m trying to see things as I know them to be true...through the lense of truth that you helped me create all those years ago, but it’s more difficult than I want it to be. I just want to be free of the both of them. I thought I was.” -- Though Thomas had dealt somewhat peripherally with Isolda, he'd never really been subject to her horrors the way Calliope had been. (And, privately, he was rather glad for that- because he didn't know if he'd have been strong enough to overcome them the way Calliope had.) "She had you for nearly twenty years, and that sort of thing doesn't go away overnight. Or maybe not even in seven years," as they'd had, together, so far. He pressed a kiss to her hair and gently held her just a bit closer. "It takes time, but we have a lifetime of that, Cath," Thomas offered, quietly. -- He was right. Though she hadn’t left her mother’s grip fully until after her twenty-first birthday, she had begun to pull away from the moment that she had begun seeing Thomas on a regular basis. He had a front row seat for her rebellion. Fighting for what they had with one another - for the love and acceptance that she had found with him - had finally put her at a breaking point with her mother. It had been a hard road, and she didn’t know where she would be right now if she hadn’t seen Thomas on campus that day, but she knew this was the life she was meant for. She settled even closer into his embrace, closing her eyes contentedly as he pressed that kiss to her hair. She was relaxed until the very last moment, and then tension ran through her like her muscles had turned to stone. We have a lifetime of that, Cath. Thomas had never called her by another woman’s name before. He’d had relationships before her, but there had never been anyone to confuse her with. She knew that he was faithful to her, and that even now, there would be no other woman by any other name. The dreams, though. In his dreams, he had a love. In her dreams, those that knew her best called her Cath. “...w-what? Did you say…Cath?” -- He hadn't even realized that he'd spoken the name from his dreams until Calliope repeated it back to him. Thomas' eyes widened, his heartbeat quickening- the way these dreams were bleeding into his real life, and now into his marriage, was altogether uncomfortable and unacceptable. He had to do better. Be better. He shook his head, as if he could shake the name and that face- and those drawings- out of his memory. "Calliope. Calliope. God, I'm so sorry. It's-" He shook his head again, though his hands fell back from her, suddenly unsure if she'd still want to be held the way he had been, after that. "It won't happen again." -- Although he seemed to be backpedaling, her shock wasn’t really from the name itself so much as it was from the commonality of it...the knowledge that if he was dreaming about loving a Cath, it meant most likely...he was dreaming of Jest. He let go of her, assuring her it wouldn’t happen again, but in the space of the next heartbeat, she had reached up and pulled him closer again, kissing him soundly. She’d only had minimal dreams of the court joker. Once, of the first time that she had ever seen him, spinning on a hoop well above the crowd. Sometimes she had dreams of Cath’s dreams...of those yellow eyes and breathless kisses and the taste of sweet treacle upon her lips. She dreamed of his frustrating, heart-stopping grin and the way that her stomach swooped happily when she saw him. She dreamed...of wanting what she simply could not have, in the face of being a favorite of the King and all that her parents wanted for her. “Do...do you dream of Jest?” That was who he reminded her of in her dreams. If he was dreaming of anyone else, this may turn even more awkward, but she hoped...she had to believe that this was the right conclusion. Even if he had said Cath did not choose him, something in her heart desperately screamed that it wasn’t true. That where Cath was concerned, her choice would always and forever be him. -- The kiss she offered was rather the last thing Thomas had expected, and it took him a beat before he could return the gesture, leaning up into her just slightly. He couldn't have known or even guessed what would come next, and the name that soon passed her lips- this time deliberately, unlike his own slip. Jest. Thomas blinked, slowly, studying Calliope's face. In his dreams Cath looked so much like her that it was sometimes hard to differentiate- which only confused things further when he saw drawings of their supposed fates or watched her walk away from him in the middle of a ballroom, set on accepting a king's proposal. "I'd say it was impossible, but- as I've come to learn- impossible is his speciality." -- "I don't…I don't remember everything yet, but I understand enough to remember how she feels when she's around him," Calliope wasn't sure what happened between the two of them, but she didn't think either of them had the full story yet. "Impossible is a rather relative term, I think," she smiled gently, though it was somewhat if a relief to know that they would better understand each other's dreams than anyone else would have a hope of doing, "Can we…promise to tell each other about the dreams we have from here on out? I think it would make me feel a lot better. Maybe it will help us both…remember, if that's what this is?" -- "He knew that she'd capture his heart from the very first time they met." Which had been somewhat odd in his own dreams, since Thomas had seen her confessing to that long before he'd seen that initial meeting. "That it is," he agreed, easily. And on the list of impossible things, these dreams should have been the very top… But the whole town couldn't have been wrong about something so pervasive and vital. "I will do that. I promise." An easy thing to say, all told, since the not telling had been more painful than he could have expected. "We can… put the pieces of them in order, together." -- “The first time she saw him, she was mesmerized,” Calliope assured him, “She thought he seemed familiar...like they’d met before. She had dreamed of him.” Thomas had been dreaming longer than she had, so maybe he knew more. Calliope nodded in relief, “We don’t have to wake each other up to talk about it unless it’s something that can’t wait, but if you ever do need to wake me up or call me or anything else, I don’t mind it. I just want to put that out there.” Calliope didn’t want him to think that he had to drop everything the moment he had a dream because of their agreement, but neither did she want him to feel like he couldn’t wake her if there was something keeping him up. “It does feel...jumbled, doesn’t it? Like the beginning and middle keep crossing one another, but the end is being evasive,” she frowned a little, though her stomach lurched in protest, something deep within her rejecting the notion of whatever the end may be. Perhaps it was just because it implied there was a conclusion to their tale. She hoped that perhaps Cath was more fortunate...that she’d gotten her bakery with her family’s blessing, but with what Thomas had already told her...that possibility seemed to grow more and more unlikely. -- It is a truth, but one of many. He'd heard those words earlier, the lilting voice eerily echoing in his mind. How many truths were out there? Did Jest have another waiting for him, one that didn't end with murderer, martyr, monarch, mad? Thomas fervently hoped so. "Maybe they dreamed of us, as we do of them. So it would be no wonder that they wanted to find this love again, in their own way." It was hopelessly romantic and more than a little ridiculous, but at this point, what wasn't? "I don't need to know the end just yet." Especially not if it was the one he feared. "I'll just ask our minds to show us their love story and nothing else." Wishful thinking to be sure. -- She smiled at the idea of Cath and Jest dreaming of them - dreams that didn’t sprout lemon trees around her bed posts - and perhaps they did. Maybe those moments that kept Cath restless in dreams were ones from this world, “Maybe you’re right. They probably wouldn’t have understood it. Even I don’t fully understand all that I’ve seen now.” Calliope tilted her head just slightly when he insisted that he didn’t need to know the end...just their love story, “That would be the ticket, wouldn’t it? I would love to dream of nothing but them, and have nothing to do with the Marchioness of Rock Turtle Cove.” She paused a moment and gave him a small squeeze, “Are you all right, Thomas?” His unwillingness to think about the rest of Jest and Cath’s lives might only be because he believed Cath had - presumably - chosen the King instead of Jest, but it could be something else as well. Better to be certain. -- "Mostly right," Thomas offered in response, Raven's insistence on the correct usage of the phrase fresh in his mind. But he'd brought an arm back around Calliope, and he exhaled, settling into to cushions and pillows below. "No matter what we dream or what became of them, it doesn't change us." It wasn't a question, but perhaps he was seeking her validation all the same. "Rock Turtle Cove and lobster quadrilles and jaberwocks don't change us." -- She kept her attention on him, though she agreed with his statement from the moment that it was said. Some of the references, she understood...at least to a degree. She knew what all of those things were even if she hadn’t quite experienced what he referenced just yet in regards to Cath and Jest. “It doesn’t change us, no. None of it does. We found our way to each other all on our own more than seven years ago now. No dreams or grand balls or corset laces required. Just a couple of college courses and some coffee,” Calliope brushed a kiss against his jaw, easy to access from her position without unsettling either of them, “Whatever happens with them is out of our hands, but we have each other.” |