[prompt] because i haven't tried as hard as i should to separate you from everything i do

[apostatised]

Of course he isn't avoiding Maria; there's no good reason to, and anyway, no necessity. The nexus is a large place - his castle remote and so often untouched by the lives of the people who come and go outside it. He doesn't have to avoid someone intentionally, specifically, to simply to lose track of them for a while.

And of course he doesn't blame her for his own shortcomings (I died for them they are mine and he never thinks Candice looked afraid of him, except, occasionally, those times that he does), and certainly he doesn't think to fault her for agreeing with - what is it now, three of three and one Ms Monaghan? Not that he's keeping track. Conversations become stilted, though; there are gaps and silences where there should (should not) be words that weren't there before and isn't this the father's complaint the world over?

Little girls always grow up, but Maria wasn't a child when he met her and she's certainly not his child. There's a cruel and hateful irony, though, in the people he loves taken from him (nobody's being taken from him; sometimes his own melodrama irritates even him) by his own superior alternative. The man is echoes of a what if that Martel doesn't allow himself to entertain; they are different, she insists, and she's right and it aches under the scar in a way he can't articulate, in a way he's entirely reluctant to examine.

There are words and then there are words and today he's not going into either of those categories, but he pesters his soon to be wife anyway to help him send an invitation to Maria (and Nouria). She hasn't seen the castle in weeks and there are things in it he'd rather like to show her. Besides that, he still has yet to meet this baby that he is, in fact, allowed to care for as one does any child. (Probably. Arguably there are plenty of good reasons that Martel shouldn't be allowed to keep drawing breath, let alone involving himself in the lives of others - and he does so hate to harp but there's a great deal he can trace to that. Deservedly.)

Martel retires to the library (always the library), has a word with those relevant to make sure he'll hear of it promptly if and when Maria takes him up on the invitation, and idles a while with his English.

He'll show her the statue, he thinks. It's is pretty.


prompt: "That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment." dorothy parker. [2.2]
word count: 420