![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Darlington’s been looking for answers his entire life. It’s the pursuit that matters, the chase that leads up to that satisfying feeling of a goal reached or a door swinging wide and letting him through, admitting him to somewhere he couldn’t have gotten to without all those hours of study and practice and dedication. He’s the person he is because of all of that: because he strove to be better, whether that meant training in the ballroom at Black Elm or spending hours drilling his way through flashcards in Mandarin, Dutch, Latin, Greek; filling the Albemarle Book with query after query in his Dante year, until Michelle finally had a conversation with the house and he’d found himself limited to no more than seven requests a week because you’re going to wind up like Chester Vance if you’re not careful, Darlington. He asks questions of everyone, of everything, always searching for some new bit of information, something that cracks the world open for him a little bit more. He loves it.
All too recently, though, he’s found that there are some questions that come harder than others; some answers he doesn’t know that he wants to find.
It feels like the two of them have been skirting around the topic of his future, Alex’s past, since the first moment he’d been truly himself in Darrow, sipping coffee in her bed the day before Christmas, his head still pounding from the aftereffects of Manuscript’s prank. Then, it had seemed almost like the least shocking thing in a litany of so many others. Compared to the all-too-present reality of having fallen into a pocket universe, to Alex being attacked by some rogue member of Scroll & Key or befriending one of New Haven’s most notorious Grays, to the fact he’d stared at Hiram’s Crucible glowing in the early morning sunlight in the corner of her bedroom, the thought that Sandow sends him on some Lethe-sponsored research trip hardly seemed traumatic enough to compare. Maybe it isn’t; maybe it doesn’t matter. But Darlington knows he hasn’t imagined the walls that go up behind Alex’s eyes when he mentions it, the sudden tension that snaps into her shoulders even when they’re at home and far from the reach of any Grays. There’s more to the story than she’s telling, a layer of answers waiting to be revealed.
He could wait. Possibly, he should. But the closer they grow, their lives entangling in ways both of them had only let themselves think fleetingly about at home, the more important knowing this particular truth becomes. Something happens to make him leave, to abandon Alex halfway through her training and cause her to come to the kind of harm that freezes his blood to think about, even when he can see her here and whole and safe--and nothing about it feels like just an ordinary research trip. It feels, if he thinks about it too long, like a fracturing. Like him having done something unforgivable, shattering whatever equilibrium exists between them and then turning tail and leaving her to deal with the fallout alone.
It’s the choice of a coward, a fool, exactly the kind of person he’s never wanted to be, and if he can fix it here--if he can find a way to never bring it about in the first place--he knows he has to try. Even if getting the answer causes both of them some pain along the way.
Neither of them have anywhere to be tonight, no late night events at the museum that require him to stay and staff the desk, Alex off the schedule at the club tonight and tomorrow. He makes dinner, opens a bottle of wine. It’s perfect, the kind of peace that still seems like such a rare and unexpected thing to have found with one another, and by the time they’re settled on the couch Darlington wonders if he shouldn’t let it continue. He can’t, he knows he can’t. He’s pushed this search for answers back too long and too far as it is.
The show they’d been watching comes to an end, the credits starting to roll, and Darlington reaches for the remote to stop it before the next episode starts to play. She's settled there against him, her head resting against his chest; he looks down at her and takes a breath, hoping the choice he’s about to make is the right one.
“Alex,” he says, and then to his surprise, he finds he can’t say anything else at all.
All too recently, though, he’s found that there are some questions that come harder than others; some answers he doesn’t know that he wants to find.
It feels like the two of them have been skirting around the topic of his future, Alex’s past, since the first moment he’d been truly himself in Darrow, sipping coffee in her bed the day before Christmas, his head still pounding from the aftereffects of Manuscript’s prank. Then, it had seemed almost like the least shocking thing in a litany of so many others. Compared to the all-too-present reality of having fallen into a pocket universe, to Alex being attacked by some rogue member of Scroll & Key or befriending one of New Haven’s most notorious Grays, to the fact he’d stared at Hiram’s Crucible glowing in the early morning sunlight in the corner of her bedroom, the thought that Sandow sends him on some Lethe-sponsored research trip hardly seemed traumatic enough to compare. Maybe it isn’t; maybe it doesn’t matter. But Darlington knows he hasn’t imagined the walls that go up behind Alex’s eyes when he mentions it, the sudden tension that snaps into her shoulders even when they’re at home and far from the reach of any Grays. There’s more to the story than she’s telling, a layer of answers waiting to be revealed.
He could wait. Possibly, he should. But the closer they grow, their lives entangling in ways both of them had only let themselves think fleetingly about at home, the more important knowing this particular truth becomes. Something happens to make him leave, to abandon Alex halfway through her training and cause her to come to the kind of harm that freezes his blood to think about, even when he can see her here and whole and safe--and nothing about it feels like just an ordinary research trip. It feels, if he thinks about it too long, like a fracturing. Like him having done something unforgivable, shattering whatever equilibrium exists between them and then turning tail and leaving her to deal with the fallout alone.
It’s the choice of a coward, a fool, exactly the kind of person he’s never wanted to be, and if he can fix it here--if he can find a way to never bring it about in the first place--he knows he has to try. Even if getting the answer causes both of them some pain along the way.
Neither of them have anywhere to be tonight, no late night events at the museum that require him to stay and staff the desk, Alex off the schedule at the club tonight and tomorrow. He makes dinner, opens a bottle of wine. It’s perfect, the kind of peace that still seems like such a rare and unexpected thing to have found with one another, and by the time they’re settled on the couch Darlington wonders if he shouldn’t let it continue. He can’t, he knows he can’t. He’s pushed this search for answers back too long and too far as it is.
The show they’d been watching comes to an end, the credits starting to roll, and Darlington reaches for the remote to stop it before the next episode starts to play. She's settled there against him, her head resting against his chest; he looks down at her and takes a breath, hoping the choice he’s about to make is the right one.
“Alex,” he says, and then to his surprise, he finds he can’t say anything else at all.
