Dinner and cake with the man who knocked him out cold first thing in the morning wasn’t really how Dorian expected to finish out the day. Then again, absolutely none of what’s happened over the past few days has felt especially predictable, although Orym had warned him that he didn’t know what they were walking into when he asked Dorian to come with him to Jrusar.
It is a little disorienting, isn’t it?
Imogen’s soft drawl is so clear that Dorian actually looks up to her place across the table from him before realizing that it wasn’t her physical voice carrying. Orym is still carrying on a conversation with Lord Eshteross while Ashton watches them with a bored expression betrayed by the shrewd glint in their eye. Fearne and Laudna are amazing one another in soft whispers and giggles. None of them look up at Imogen’s voice, and her expression turns a little repentant.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. I wanted to thank you for going along with that ruse back at the inn.
Dorian opens his mouth to answer verbally, but snaps it shut, his mind casting around for a way to answer before he focuses his thoughts to resemble the way he speaks. Is this how it works?
It does for me. You catch on fast. I thought you might be embarrassed to have this conversation out loud, and I do owe you an apology for dragging you into that without your permission.
Her words are accompanied by a series of images, like still images displayed in rapid succession with a mauve filter set overtop, and the flashfire sensation of panic, searching for an answer, looking to him and – is that how Dorian looks to other people? A little disheveled, a bruise rising on his cheek, his body half-turned toward the balcony, where Orym had just leapt down. Dorian wonders if that’s how Imogen’s memory looks, but the idea of thinking about how other people encounter memory makes his head hurt.
It’s also terrifying, too.
At that thought, the images and emotions evaporate. Imogen looks a little embarrassed, shifting awkwardly in her chair. Oh, I’m real sorry about that, too, she says directly into his mind again. I usually have better control over it. Today’s been… harder than usual for me.
No need to apologize on either count. Dorian forms the thoughts and tries not to let his mind wander too far into any of the other things he’s been idly wondering about. We were in a tight spot, and it worked.
Well, you seemed safe, too. The images of that moment return, flashing between all the others: Orym gone, Ashton on the other side of the room, Fresh Cut Grass holding Danas’s tiny body, Bertrand being Bertrand, Fearne, deliberately looking away from Laudna at that moment, with a stab of an emotion that resonates with something buried and ignored in Dorian’s chest. Then there’s Dorian, along with the image of him standing over Orym with his sword drawn in the dark; a bloodied and panting Orym leaning against Dorian with his sword drawn and his shield up. Then back to Dorian, standing near enough for her to reach.
He seems safe because of all that? Or because of Orym? That same emotion twinges like a plucked string in his chest, to see the two of them like that. Dorian has devoted exactly zero thought to how the two of them must seem, until now. Through Imogen’s eyes, at least, it seems…
It’s charming, Imogen interjects with a little smile, her softened eyes drifting over toward Laudna with apparent fondness. I understand it. It isn’t that I don’t think you’re handsome, please don’t think I– Here, there’s a quick series of images of Dorian looking humiliatingly valiant, sending a hot flush up the back of his neck and along the tips of his ears. Anyway, I just thought you might not get the wrong idea, considering.
Considering. Considering what?
Dorian tries to steer his thoughts, apparently so loud that Imogen can’t ignore them, even if he has been, back to a topic he has control over. So, you can just hear everything everyone is thinking?
I try to keep my mind shut, but some days are a little harder. Some people just think a little louder than others. It’s just the top-level stuff. I have to try real hard to go deeper than that, and I don’t prefer that.
That sounds horrible. And it does, not only because Dorian is a private sort of person who’s barely opened some of his most tightly-held secrets to people like Fearne and Orym and Dariax and Opal, but because it feels…
It gets pretty overwhelming, Imogen agrees, her thoughts accompanied with a constant weariness, a touch of humiliation. It’s just an echo of the constant noise she must exhaust herself trying to hold away, and Dorian can’t blame her for wanting to stay away from crowds. Thank you for saying that, though. Most people think it would be fun, and it’s not.
I have enough with my personal thoughts. I wouldn’t want everyone else’s, too. I’m sorry for thinking so loudly.
He’s doubly sorry if it gave Imogen the wrong idea about him and Orym. It’s not that Dorian doesn’t – well, he admires everything about Orym. He’d follow him into anything, and he has. But that’s all they are right now, whatever strum of longing seems to reverberate through Dorian’s chest whenever he looks at him. Whatever of his own cacophonous thoughts when Orym thrusts himself into danger, like the dissonant clatter of an out of tune instrument shouting at him to go after him.
It’s not that he doesn’t think Orym can handle himself, Dorian knows better than anyone that he can. How he never thinks of himself as the kind of person who can solve a problem bigger than him, but he can’t stop himself from trying. How he prefers to think of himself as nobody of any consequence, when he’s so obviously profoundly important to a great many people already.
Dorian thinks about the things that shaped Orym, the things he literally didn’t know until he was in Zephrah himself. How Orym wasn’t keeping secrets, just keeping his silence about them, afraid to seem like he was bleeding on anyone else. How what he needs is someone to do what Orym won’t do for himself, and how swiftly Dorian was willing to try and be that for him.
And, after all that, how could Dorian not spend half his time chasing after him?
To be entirely honest with you, Dorian, you’re not even nearly as loud as he is.
Imogen takes another delicate bite of her dinner, her eyes not quite meeting his, as if she thinks she must have said too much. When she looks back up at him from beneath the curtain of her pastel hair, she shares a softly encouraging feeling, like the buffer of warmth deep in his chest, even though her smile looks a little watery and tired.
I know we’re practically strangers at this point–
Dorian’s mouth breaks into an open smile and he stifles it, clearing his throat behind his hand. I think you already know everything about me?
Not everything. Just enough. But maybe you should talk to Orym about this, is all. I think – and I am sometimes wrong here – that it would be a good conversation for you both. That’s all.
There’s a sense like a cord being cut, and Imogen turns her tired smile up to the head of the table to address Lord Eshteross. Dorian follows, looking between her and Laudna, then at each of their companions in turn, before landing on Orym, who winces as he shifts in his chair and looks back up at him.
Just for a second, Dorian thinks it would be nice to have a fraction of Imogen’s ability, to just reach out to him from here. To laugh at how the two of them look like heroes in Imogen’s memory of them. To talk about those other things they don’t talk about. Maybe to ask what it is he thinks so loudly about. Then he thinks about the rest of it, Imogen’s private hell.
It would be a good conversation for you both. The memory of Imogen’s voice drifts back across his consciousness and she blinks her gaze back over to him and smiles a little.
Well. Maybe he will.