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He learns over time that Aris never flinches. When she feels cornered or scared she attacks, lunging forward instead of stepping back. He adds that to the list of things he knows about her, ranked by importance and subcategorized by their danger to herself and others, full of qualifiers and margin notes.

The very first thing on the list is to trust her, no matter what game she's playing.
The second thing is never to trust her because she's always playing two moves ahead and sometimes on an entirely different board than the rest of them.

It's a confusing list.

Somewhere on there is her love of peanut butter, squished between a hatred of salt and the farrier. The last one has a note not to be nearby when the man comes at her hooves as she tends to bite the nearest thing.

Physically abusive has been added and removed so many times that he finally gave up and just tacked on the modifier her way of showing love.

Love has been crossed out and replaced with trust.

Trust is on the list 31 times, making it the most repeated word.

Her abuse of him is predictable and usually necessary and takes up a good chunk of the page. He understands that she does it because it's how she shows that she cares and he knows she's pulling her punches anyway so he doesn't mind it. He uses her and she uses him and somehow they meet in the middle on equal footing so there's a wobbly smily face smeared beside that entry.

Her best-kept secrets have all been starred and then crossed out. Some things don't need to be quantified. Others are listed with a sniper's attention to detail; what bits of her are the most sensitive when brushed or bitten, how she prefers her hair down so she can hide behind it and suffers having it up only because she hates having someone brush it out after it's been wind-blown all day, how much she likes the smell of the rain but pretends not to.

She hates a lot of things and tolerates others but the only things he's ever seen her look at with soft eyes are peanut butter balls and human children too young to do more than toddle. She never goes close but he watches her watching them and wonders what she saw to make her pine that way.

Close to the top of the list, starred twice and underlined, is to never question her, especially about her past.

She never says goodbye. She'll tell him to kick ass the night before, but she never sees him off and she never says farewell. He wonders about that too and there's a fair amount of speculation in the margins but it's been smeared beyond recognition.

Infertile is close to the bottom because it's meaningless. Her ability to have children means nothing to her one way or another and so he doesn't think about it either. The only reason it makes the list at all is an off-handed comment she made once hinting that perhaps she hadn't always been infertile, which opens a can of worms he refuses to acknowledge because he knows not to ask and he's often too curious for his own good.

There's a very large blank in the center of his list, ringed around with speculation about war and killing. They don't talk about it.

Printed in a tiny font squished between comments on her bite strength and the power in her kicks is a winding bit of poetry about the brilliant blue of her eyes and how soft her hair gets when it's freshly washed and dried and the quirk of her mouth when she's pressing back amusement but he'll go to his grave swearing they're just friends.

He values her company more than anything.

There's a short list in one margin labeled afraid of and under poetic bullet points about being betrayed and getting emotionally hurt the word bees has been circled twice. He winces whenever he thinks of it because the last time a bee blew too close to her she snapped at it, the bee's body crunching between her teeth. Anyone else would have seen it as bravery but he knows she was afraid.
Still, it's not like he'd have the guts to eat a storm, so another item on his list explains her stance on fears is to charge straight at them at full speed. It suits her.

Her rare, rasping laughter doesn't, too happy and light to have a comfortable place on his list. So too with the very occasional compliment she pays him, backhanded though it may be. They're soft enough to need another list that will go untitled until he can find out what those moments mean.

He's not usually one for words but as in most things she's the exception. In one since crossed-out paragraph he compares her to a spider, one of the beautiful but deadly ones, cultivating her lies like threads in a web with equal parts precision and care. She balances atop the mountain of false faces with a grace he'll never have and sometimes when he catches her gaze he finds the spider staring back. It should scare him, and it does, but the first point - to trust her above all others - keeps him ensnared, and keeps the list growing ever longer and more tangled.

You're a fraud and you know it
But it's too good to throw it all away
Anyone would do the same
You've got 'em going
And you're careful not to show it
Sometimes you even fool yourself a bit
It's like magic
But it's always been a smoke and mirrors game

A nonsensical little thing that grew out of proportion very quickly, and ended up essential to their plot. Hawkeye is beginning to see behind the curtain, and surprisingly isn't thrown by what he's finding. Perhaps these two are better matched than it seemed at first sight.

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Ref: [link]

Description
Music: [link]

He learns over time that Aris never flinches. When she feels cornered or scared she attacks, lunging forward instead of stepping back. He adds that to the list of things he knows about her, ranked by importance and subcategorized by their danger to herself and others, full of qualifiers and margin notes.

The very first thing on the list is to trust her, no matter what game she's playing.
The second thing is never to trust her because she's always playing two moves ahead and sometimes on an entirely different board than the rest of them.

It's a confusing list.

Somewhere on there is her love of peanut butter, squished between a hatred of salt and the farrier. The last one has a note not to be nearby when the man comes at her hooves as she tends to bite the nearest thing.

Physically abusive has been added and removed so many times that he finally gave up and just tacked on the modifier her way of showing love.

Love has been crossed out and replaced with trust.

Trust is on the list 31 times, making it the most repeated word.

Her abuse of him is predictable and usually necessary and takes up a good chunk of the page. He understands that she does it because it's how she shows that she cares and he knows she's pulling her punches anyway so he doesn't mind it. He uses her and she uses him and somehow they meet in the middle on equal footing so there's a wobbly smily face smeared beside that entry.

Her best-kept secrets have all been starred and then crossed out. Some things don't need to be quantified. Others are listed with a sniper's attention to detail; what bits of her are the most sensitive when brushed or bitten, how she prefers her hair down so she can hide behind it and suffers having it up only because she hates having someone brush it out after it's been wind-blown all day, how much she likes the smell of the rain but pretends not to.

She hates a lot of things and tolerates others but the only things he's ever seen her look at with soft eyes are peanut butter balls and human children too young to do more than toddle. She never goes close but he watches her watching them and wonders what she saw to make her pine that way.

Close to the top of the list, starred twice and underlined, is to never question her, especially about her past.

She never says goodbye. She'll tell him to kick ass the night before, but she never sees him off and she never says farewell. He wonders about that too and there's a fair amount of speculation in the margins but it's been smeared beyond recognition.

Infertile is close to the bottom because it's meaningless. Her ability to have children means nothing to her one way or another and so he doesn't think about it either. The only reason it makes the list at all is an off-handed comment she made once hinting that perhaps she hadn't always been infertile, which opens a can of worms he refuses to acknowledge because he knows not to ask and he's often too curious for his own good.

There's a very large blank in the center of his list, ringed around with speculation about war and killing. They don't talk about it.

Printed in a tiny font squished between comments on her bite strength and the power in her kicks is a winding bit of poetry about the brilliant blue of her eyes and how soft her hair gets when it's freshly washed and dried and the quirk of her mouth when she's pressing back amusement but he'll go to his grave swearing they're just friends.

He values her company more than anything.

There's a short list in one margin labeled afraid of and under poetic bullet points about being betrayed and getting emotionally hurt the word bees has been circled twice. He winces whenever he thinks of it because the last time a bee blew too close to her she snapped at it, the bee's body crunching between her teeth. Anyone else would have seen it as bravery but he knows she was afraid.
Still, it's not like he'd have the guts to eat a storm, so another item on his list explains her stance on fears is to charge straight at them at full speed. It suits her.

Her rare, rasping laughter doesn't, too happy and light to have a comfortable place on his list. So too with the very occasional compliment she pays him, backhanded though it may be. They're soft enough to need another list that will go untitled until he can find out what those moments mean.

He's not usually one for words but as in most things she's the exception. In one since crossed-out paragraph he compares her to a spider, one of the beautiful but deadly ones, cultivating her lies like threads in a web with equal parts precision and care. She balances atop the mountain of false faces with a grace he'll never have and sometimes when he catches her gaze he finds the spider staring back. It should scare him, and it does, but the first point - to trust her above all others - keeps him ensnared, and keeps the list growing ever longer and more tangled.

You're a fraud and you know it
But it's too good to throw it all away
Anyone would do the same
You've got 'em going
And you're careful not to show it
Sometimes you even fool yourself a bit
It's like magic
But it's always been a smoke and mirrors game

A nonsensical little thing that grew out of proportion very quickly, and ended up essential to their plot. Hawkeye is beginning to see behind the curtain, and surprisingly isn't thrown by what he's finding. Perhaps these two are better matched than it seemed at first sight.

<< PREVIOUS | NEXT >>

Ref: [link]