Just a Quick Break [Lev]

"If you're able to." She repeated quietly. It made perfect sense to her, she felt like that nearly every day. The only difference was, she felt she was safer in the prison.

She rolled her eyes at his joke-- horses were tame, there was really no assurance, there. "I've tried..." She'd tried so many times. Packed her bags in a fit, written a note to her parents, tried to say good-bye to Annalie... every time she had just stopped at the door. "Being trapped is safer than running." Of course, he wouldn't agree. He was doing the complete opposite, and would argue that she was wrong because of that. But he didn't know what it was like to feel his heart seize up at the thought of even leaving the house for too long. He didn't even know where his house was. "I gave up."

Right, life had no guarantees. No guarantees that any place she would run to would be better than the life she was headed for. A life without happiness, sure, but a comfortable, easy life. She wasn't going to squander the blessing because she didn't know how to be happy. At his philosophy, she just mumbled a "hmm..." that echoed and resounded off the high ceilings.

For a considerable moment, he seemed to zone out, presumably processing what she said and formulating an adequate response. He gazed almost unblinkingly at the wall opposite to him as though some two-dimensional ghosts danced against it--forms he'd long ago stopped looking at, stopped acknowledging the existence of. It would have been easy to crawl back to the shadows that enraptured him in that present moment, but his eyes had already adjusted to the sunlight. How did one convince others to throw off that darkness, when darkness was all they knew? Their only reality? When they thought that a small fire was enough, knowing nothing of the sun?

Would he go on until the end of his days trying and failing to have ever changed a single life?

Without appearing to break out of his reverie--indeed, he didn't look away until the last moment--and with what seemed like a good deal of effort, he hoisted himself upright (his exhaustion had caused him to slouch into a near-lying position) by grasping the side of the tub. Looming over it slightly, he fixed her eye-to-eye with a stare almost as fervent as the words he spoke, quietly, as if relating to her a secret that only gods and God and the cosmos dared to whisper, "What if...we're all living in a cave, and what you see and everything you've ever known is actually just--"

But at that moment, a door opened and a voice cut across the bedroom outside, "Mistress! Therese, I'm home--I have the most ridiculous story to tell you..."

Effectively silenced, Lev fell back, looking appropriately alarmed. It was perhaps something he should have thought about before intruding on a lady's privacy, but if he got thrown out into the streets now for it, there was no way he'd have the strength to even make it to a bench to sleep on, let alone his apartment. And that maid was awfully catty (in his opinion); he didn't doubt that she would be less than pleased to find him there again, alone with her mistress in a bathroom.

She wasn't sure what he was about to say, but she knew that she had been immediately enraptured by it. Unusually large eyes even wider at his every word, she nearly edged closer, as if she would hear him better. In that moment, her ears were so trained on his quiet that she could hear water droplets fall from a cloth on the other side of the room (a side effect of major anxiety-- she could be very alert).

Which meant that Annelie's greeting was like thunder in her ears. If he looked alarmed, she looked as if she was about to be caught with a dead body (and she just might have been, had she waited any longer to act). Scrambling out of the tub and falling over the opposite side onto the tile, she groaned in pain, and crawled to the other side (as if her maid could see through the door-- really, though, she had eyes everywhere), hoisting him up and over the tub without warning, in the same way that mothers in fear lift impossibly heavy objects off their children. Then, she yanked the blanket away and laid it over the tub after mouthing an 'I'm so sorry!'.

Checking her reflection to make sure it was just the regular amount of disheveled, she walked out as calmly as she could (which wasn't really calm at all, but that was nothing new). "Annelie...!" She looked relieved-- and she was, she was starting worry about why she hadn't been back yet. Which worked out well for getting Lev in, but was terrible on her conscience. "I thought you'd never be back--" Literally. "Ridiculous...?" She hoped not too ridiculous-- it was making her nervous.

He only barely managed to stifle a cry of both surprise and pain when he was heaved over into the unforgivingly cold, hard bathtub. He would have taken that over another heel to the ribs, though--especially in the state that he was in.

When Therese emerged from the bathroom, a look of suspicion passed over Annelie's features for the briefest of moments. Had she heard something...? It sounded almost like someone was trying to cry out in there. Maybe she'd been hearing things. Or it could have been Therese, jumping in surprise. That in itself wouldn't have been surprising. Deciding to brush it off, she began putting away the new lace and thread that she'd bought with the pocket watch money, talking as she sorted out the spools of thread, "I'm sorry, mistress, I meant to be home much earlier, but I bumped into this silly man on the way, and he made me drop all my things in the mud." She shook her head with a dismissive click of her tongue, "He payed for it, but what a charlatan he was! Tried to convince me that he was French nobility, or something of that nature--he clearly wasn't."

Clapping her hands together lightly (too loud, and it would startle Therese), she changed to a lighter tone, "Well, he's gone now, I suppose. And I've bought the prettiest trimming for your dress for the party! You're going to look stunning--" Annelie loved parties. Not for the party itself, but because she got to dress up Therese in the fanciest clothes, like a human doll. ...Nevermind that they and her hair always inevitably got messed up by the end of the night, making it a somewhat futile effort.

Turning to the door, with one last glance at the bathroom, she excused herself, "If you don't mind, miss, I'm going to go have a quick word with the head maid about the washing." Before she could start work on it, she wanted Therese's party dress to be cleaned to her exact specifications. "If I'd gotten home sooner, I wouldn't be in such a rush, but I'm afraid they might have already started... I'll just be a minute, and then I'll come help with your clothes, if you like." No doubt poor Therese had been waiting all day (or however long she'd been home) for her maid to help her get undressed.

As soon as she slipped out, Lev stumbled out of the bathtub like an uncoordinated drunk, leaving the blanket behind. Without bothering to say anything (it was impossible for him to keep his voice down in the moments when it would have been most prudent to do so), he made a clear gesture: he was going back downstairs. Hopefully he would make it the whole way, but whatever happened would be infinitely better than the alternative. Let the maid find him passed out on the stairs--might as well, since if he was staying there for the duration of his illness, she was going to see him eventually--at least he wouldn't be in this bedroom.