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etirabys · 3 years ago

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... how far along is the chaperone fic...? im asking because of (horny) reasons...

(context: Mirror Visitor wip in which Thorn, Ophelia, and Archibald travel together after book 2, and "slutty homewrecker Archibald" ends up being the best option for couples' counseling and possibly sex delegate.)

Not far, I'm sorry to say. I have 5000 words of it's-not-really-coming-together. I'll dump 80% of what I wrote under the cut. Things that will disappoint you: (1) It does not contain porn – I did write some but was seriously unsatisfied with it so I've left it out, (2) I never get to the comedic point where Ophelia bugs Archibald about fucking her husband because they've hit the point where that's started seeming like a good idea to her.

It was at least not boring, fleeing in exile with the Pole's ex-Treasurer on a quest to kill God. After staging my own death – any number of cuckolds with a grudge taking advantage of my severation from my clan could be the prime suspect – I followed the deathly tall, limping Dragon bastard looking over my work like an auditor, and opened space for him. We traveled, mostly at the pleasure of whatever Compass Roses we discovered. In between my increasing mastery of space and his trick with the mirrors, we were perfect vanishing accomplices.

But, it seemed to me, we would not make much progress in finding Farouk's master – and I thrilled to think of such a thing – unless we added a reader. And indeed, we did not get far. We found gateways to Sidh, Cyclope, Zephyr, and the Star, and gathered clues by the bushel but not trails. "We need her," I told him. "We need to find a way to Anima." He would shake his head and tell me there were greater priorities. He alternated between making a good case and silencing me with a thunderous look. The third time I brought it up, there was distrust I recognized in it: a jealous husband.

Well, I found a way to Anima anyway, one of the weeks when we were doing our work apart. I didn't even intend to. I wasn't even sure where I was, until I saw the objects rattling at a storefront, and a man's coathem snapping at the pavement when he dropped his wallet. I stole some clothes, found a receptive-looking woman, and told her I was a tourist from Zephyr, because it was the Zephyrian accent I had gotten the best hang of. I asked where I could find museums.

And that led me straight to Ophelia. It wasn't two days' work. I felt quite pleased at what a good detective I was turning out to make, even when the only eyes I could stare out of were my own. Her museum was shut down, but it took only casual inquiries to find her family home when I introduced myself as a traveling scholar with questions about the old catalogue, and then...

Then I went back to the meeting point where Thorn expected me.

"I found a way to your wife," I said. I made sure to be sitting several meters away, with his entire body in my field of view. Thorn's face was not as expressive as his hands were sometimes, or his good leg. When he tensed to strike his knee would swing a little, readying to do the lion's share of the work. "We can be at her home within three minutes, if you pleased."

It was the hands that moved, and what a tell! The knuckles were white. He stared at me. "Did you make contact?"

"No. I think that is your honor, as her husband."

His gaze swung down. He said nothing. And then he grunted, "If it is that easy... yes. We should. Her skills as a reader would be most..." After a long pause, "Take me to her."

"When?"

"Now."

It was night-time in Anima when we went to fetch her.

I stole into her bedroom – I was used to doing such things quietly – and realized, to my surprise, that it was a shared room. A young boy slept on a bed on the left side. To the right, the little woman who had captured the heart of the oddest man of the Pole was still awake, reading by a night light. When she saw me the book jerked out of her hands in one convulsive motion onto the coverlet, and the scarf draped across her shoulder briefly lashed about like a snake. She did not make a noise, her face did not change. But her glasses changed color so quickly that in the dim light it was as if they shuttered her eyes.

I made a beckoning gesture and backed out into the hallway. With extraordinary caution she left the bed, lifting her nightgown up to avoid tripping on it, and eased out of her room.

"Is he here?" she breathed when the door closed behind her. Truly, the Treasurer had nothing to fear from me.

"Outside, in the garden," I said. "Will you come with us?"

"Yes."

I examined her face, making sure she understood what was being asked. "You will not return here, or to anywhere familiar. We are fugitives, Thorn and I. Our prey is very powerful, and makes the idea of hunting ridiculous."

"You've changed, Archibald," she said. "I haven't. Let's go."

I took opened a path to the garden and led her straight out. She was not aware I could do that – made the smallest little cry into her scarf. It gave me insight into what she would sound like in bed. I have much experience backing such mappings.

Then it was the three of us in the garden, my eyes snapping avidly between them. What a pair! Neither of them comely, and so mismatched in size. Thorn was utterly still, and crackled with tension. Ophelia was in motion with agitation – the scarf lashed around her, and she was shivering badly in the misty cold. Her nipples stood out against the worn gray fabric of her nightgown. Neither of them spoke.

After a few seconds, I took off my coat and offered it to her. Thorn gave me a glance that said he wanted to kill me. Ophelia was blind to this – she slipped into it gratefully, and in my defense, mine fit her better than his would have – I was between them in height. I said, "We make an odd trio. We must move quickly."

We returned to the Compass Rose entrance tucked on that abandoned farm several miles away, and, several minutes later, were back in our grand hideout in Zephyr.

// Scene setting – winds whipping around constantly, calmer in the towns where the inhabitants control the atmosphere; the wealthier the house, the better the control, the richer with scents. The Zephyrians are big into scents, which are blown away quickly in areas not under control.

The married couple had still not spoken a word to each other.

I have to say, I am not a cruel person. But I still relish discomfort – most of all when I can view it from faraway, and it has nothing to do with me. With those in the same room I prefer amicable relations. So this drama that crackled between them, which I knew I had not primarily instigated, was balm to me. I puttered around and made them Zephyrian persimmon tea as Ophelia warmed her hands on the fire and threw a cautious look at Thorn every now and then. Finally, she said, "Thank you for coming for me."

"It was not a favor," he said forbiddingly.

She rallied. "It was good for me. I was – under constant watch. My museum was shut down. My family was – they didn't understand much about what had happened to me."

Thorn didn't give me a glance when he said, "Do you have anything to say?"

"Anything else to say? No," she stammered, in honest puzzlement. After some thought, she fumbled in her pocket and extended his fob watch to him. "This, you can have back."

He stared at it, and after a second of silence, took it without grazing over her glove.

I opened my mouth. I shut it. I could have slipped a thought into her head, told her what he wanted – it was clear I was better at reading her husband than she – but I had used that power so infrequently in the past months that it did not occur to me until a few seconds later, when they had broken their gazes and a cold silence was between them. And since it was too late, I sipped my tea and smiled, enjoying it.

We went to bed; Thorn stormy, Ophelia bewildered, and me pleased.

The next day I prepared to visit a Zephyrian library with some records I'd requested a week ago. On hearing my errand, Ophelia said, "Oh, please, may I go with you?"

I examined her. She was not the most distinctive person, but she was easy to describe and therefore easily caught. "Not with that scarf."

"I can leave it behind."

"The glasses?"

She bit her lip. "I can't see without them. But I can reshape them?"

"That'll do. The Zephyrian style tends to the square, with thin metal frames. Are you opposed to cutting your hair?"

The biting turned into a gnaw. "No," she said in her muted voice. Her hair was very long, and tied back messily with a ribbon. "Maybe it's for the best. I don't have a comb."

"Zephyr is in no lack of combs," I said. She was still wearing her nightdress, and my coat. "Or clothes for ladies. Scissors, though, I have on hand. Face the mirror, please."

She brought her chair to face the long, old mirror propped up against the wall, which Thorn used as his entryway from the hideout to all the close locations on the Ark. I cut the long, thick waves at the nape of her neck. Freed of the weight of her hair from the neck down, it bounced up into the air. I had converted three quarters of the waterfall into a cloud when I heard a slight noise from behind me.

We both turned around. Thorn had half a step into the main hall where I was doing my work. He was staring at the mirror.

Ophelia said, nervously, "Good morning. We thought I was too recognizable – and were making some changes to my appearance."

His gaze was fixed on my hand, close to her neck. "It is a good idea," he said.

He sat down at the breakfast table and did not look away from us as I finished my work. It didn't take long. Her hair, short, was so chaotic it made any unevenness hard to see. I studied it and said, "Combs."

"Yes, I need one."

"No, not combs for brushing your hair with, although I'll get you that today from the stores. To keep your hair in place. Two large ones or four small – I think silver would look good."

"I'll leave it up to you," Ophelia said, losing interest. She carded through her hair in fascination. "I certainly won't be able to tie it."

I could feel Thorn crackling from fifteen feet away. A most monogamous man. This would have to be sorted out soon. I said, "Thorn, why don't you show your wife around the grounds and show her all the mirror passages we've put around here while I get her clothes?"

"I am willing to do that," he said, in a kind of reluctant grunt. Charming man.

I slipped a thought into Ophelia's head as I left the hall – have patience with him. I suggest speaking honestly of your feelings.

Ophelia favored the drab, so I bought her a fashionable Zephyrian lady's bright green trousers, several silky blouses, leather boots, a rust-colored dress with gold piping, and a dark rose overcoat with a tall collar that could conceal a scarf underneath it. And yes, four combs, silver studded with topaz. Thorn would bristle, unless things very well. But would he have done a better job? Did he have the same appreciation for a well dressed woman? I thought not.

But there was nothing to fear. When I came back, they were both sitting in the main hall looking at folders Thorn had put together of God's movements. Thorn had no reason to reread any of it, really, and in fact he wasn't – his eyes were fixed at the top of the page. He looked vaguely stunned. Ophelia, on the other hand, was rosy-glassed. While it was hard to tell, her hair looked more mussed than I'd last seen it. Testingly, I pulled out the combs out of their packaging and fixed her hair in place so that, from a distance, she would almost seem to have a neat bob. I put a finger on her chin to lift her face up to examine her – she looked both different, and comely. I looked at Thorn.

[have some conversation. Ophelia is phoning in it. Thorn has a 5 second lag in response]

That confirmed it. He didn't look jealous at all. He was simply staring at his wife's face, and she was looking back, a flush rising to her cheeks.

I found it hard not to smirk. The mirror tour had gone well.

Not even having to wear bright green trousers could put a dent in Ophelia's mood in the next few days. They roamed around the grounds for hours alone in the evening. I have never seen Thorn happier. His entire demeanor softened; sometimes in him I glimpsed the golden radiance of his aunt. I don't think I understood how deeply unhappy he was in the Pole – not that, I admit, I would have cared had I known, at the time. Before we had arguably saved each other's lives several times in our travels. Before I had understood that my door to something greater than even entertainment – purpose – lay through the dour, hated court accountant who had turned out to harbor ambitions deeper and more interesting than I could have ever imagined.

I was happy for them. (And that was, frankly, a new emotion for me.) And I also found their happiness boring, so I turned my attention back to the hunt – the delicate trail of hints, and the concomitant investigations we could make, and their relative priorities. To take Ophelia to Sidh so she could read the objects in the room where we knew, for sure, God had killed someone several years ago... to visit the Star and see what archives we could infiltrate... hunting an immortal was, frankly, more interesting than young love.

That is, until one afternoon, when young love dashed out of his room with his shirt half-unbuttoned, deathly pale, and sprinted into the mirror in the hall. And the other young love walked out a minute later, fully dressed, with a long cut across her cheek.

I set down my dossier, astonished. "He never," I exclaimed.

"He didn't mean to," Ophelia said, and collapsed into the chair across me. "We, um."

The silence stretched on. I rolled my eyes as I fetched disinfectant and skin-tape from the medical kit in the bathroom. "I can guess what you were doing. What's mystifying to me is why he lost control."

"Is that something he – does? Lose control?"

"Yes," I said simply, and pulled down my collar to show her a thin scar running across my upper chest. "He was very upset about it. I think it must have been the infusion of Animist power. It's known to shake things up. So does removal, you know – I didn't get my Arkadian side until I was cut from the Web." And how strange it was, that these days I was thinking of it as a blessing.

"What did you do?"

"Seduced a woman on Sidh," I confessed. "It was early on. It made him angry. Because it drew attention, you see – harmed the mission. He didn't think I took deicide seriously enough. He had a point. I haven't philandered since."

She was skeptical. "Just like that?"

"Just like that. There are real things to pursue, you see." I didn't like this thread of conversation so much. I didn't want to explain the gap between the me she'd last seen and the me of now. "What did you do?"

"Um. Push him away. Rather hard. He may have read it as being hit on the chest. He grabbed me rather suddenly and I..." She looked vexed. "He doesn't move like a normal person. It's either – he's not responsive, or he's yanking me around. I'm guessing that's not normal, anyway."

A more hopeless pair of virgins could scarcely be imagined. I said, "No, it is generally good practice not to surprise your partner in bed."

She silently applied the disinfectant and the skin-tape, which adhered neatly to her face and then took on its color. "Should I go find him?"

I reviewed Thorn as a person. "No. I think it is I who should talk to him. But let us give him half an hour to himself first."

I strolled out into the constant wind and checked mirror after mirror, lodged into the dirt or hammered to the tree. I made much use of my power – I don't like walking outside towns in Zephyr. You're liable to lean against a north wind for a dozen steps before suddenly entering a zone where the flow reverses and the south wind knocks you almost off balance.

I eventually found Thorn hunched over on a tree trunk behind a mirror at the edges of the grounds, looking as miserable as I've ever seen him. The wind howled around us; we would have to raise our voices to be heard. I sat down on the dirt next to him, unhappily aware of the effect the moist soil was having on my black velvet pants.

After a quarter-hour, I dared to put my hand on his arm. He looked at it with an expression I once would have labeled forbidding; now I recognized it as lost. I said, "She does not hold it against you, my friend. But you should come back and apologize anyway."

"You say friend," he boomed flatly. "Are there many men you call friend, when you have designs on their wives?"

"Thorn, have you known me ever to lie?"

His eyes narrowed. I could see him review the past decade of our acquaintanceship. "I have known you to mislead."

"Can you think of ways in which this sentence could be misleading? – I will never sleep with Ophelia for as long as she is your wife and you would disapprove of the notion."

He turned an astonished stare on me. "You think I would ever approve?"

I grinned and shrugged. "Stranger things have happened."

After a pause, he forced out, "I underrate you. Your conduct has been impeccable since..." His eyes skittered away, thinking of that time he had caught me coming out of that Sidhean archivist's apartment. His anger, briefly, had made the air a knife to my body.

It was not an excellent transition, but I had to ask. "There is one thing I don't understand. How did she make you angry?"

A long silence. "She shoved me – here." Gestured at his sternum. "There was a time when someone did that to my mother, in bed. And she was angry, and frightened. And I have her memories."

I knew some of Farouk's favorites. All of them liked – if liking was the word for it – being a favorite; few of them, save Berenilde, loved Farouk. It would shock me if he were gentle in bed. I studied Thorn with new eyes: he was a virgin, but sex was not new to him.

"Does Ophelia know about this?"

"No."

It was then I knew that Thorn considered me a friend, although perhaps he did not use the word in his own mind. Men tend not to tell me their secrets. It means something to me, therefore, when they do.

There was little to say. I had no advice. I had gone to bed with women who had patches of memory to steer around; I did not know how to assuage the fears of a man whose partner weighed half what he did.

...

The days dragged on. I have never seen people more bottled up about each other. Things never get to that point at Farouk's court. I was fascinated. Sometimes Ophelia would stop in the middle of putting away some papers to stare at the length of Thorn sleeping on the sofa. Ophelia once came out of her room wearing the rust-and-gold dress I'd bought her when her trousers were in the wash, and Thorn dropped a dish towel. They seemed to have invented telepathy for the pure purpose of staring at each other without meeting gazes. He lingered on the curve of her neck and the taper of her calves; she on his hands and his gait. They were infectious; each made me notice the other more. I masturbated more often, and was indignant about it.

After a month of this, Thorn spoke to me at an unexpected time. We had discovered a new gateway to a minor ark, and I had taken him around so he could acquaint himself with the mirrors in major locations. It was on our way back that he said, "I was greatly wrong about something. I thought I would never approve. But if I can't, it seems to be my marital duty to step aside for someone who can."

It was a mysterious way of speaking but I remembered immediately. I did not believe immediately. "You mean..."

He looked pained when I did not fill in the blanks myself. I was too wary of offending him, of verbalizing the suggestion. "I cannot satisfy my wife. As inappropriate as I have considered you in the past - it is certain that you are skilled at such things. And we both trust you. You are the prime candidate."

"Ah," I said. I'd thought of having sex with Ophelia approximately every day since we brought her to Zephyr, but I had never found the idea less appealing than when her husband was walking beside me, radiating pain from every centimeter of his body. "I don't think she will like this idea."

"For now, it is you or nothing. She may choose nothing, but – I will make her see reason. She is very distracted. It will do her good to have her needs met." Make Ophelia see reason? The woman who had practically frog-marched me into prison to marry her to a man headed for a slow execution.

"And you, you are not distracted?"

"I can set it aside," he said. What a damn liar. I rolled my eyes.

Some more steps. A pause, to capture his reflection in a mirror behind the glass of a closed store. He had done this thirty times on this ark – in his shoes I would be afraid of losing track of the spatial organization of those portals. But Thorn never forgot anything.

He would never forget how any of this had gone down.

I said, "There is no need to let one mistake deter you. It is you that she wants."

"It's not just the claws," he said. "I'm not cut out for any of this. I don't know what to do. I'm constantly reacting to her and controlling that reaction – there's not much room left in my head. The world as a problem is not organized once I get in bed with her, it becomes a massively unconstrained optimization problem."

"Men stupider than you manage," I pointed out. "All my ancestors, you may think of them."

"I am different," he said plainly. "You know I am different."

I did know. It was hard to explain exactly what it was, but it was clear to everyone that he was not the same kind of person as me, or Ophelia, or Berenilde. It would not, in fact, surprise me if that great gulf extended to the bedroom. But, seriously, how hard could it be? All he had to do was just...

I felt a great impatiance rising up in me. "Look," I said. "I have a different suggestion."

#dashreplies #infinite monkey #the mirror visitor #the mirror visitor quartet #the missing of clairdelune #fandemonium

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