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Playing host had been Archibald’s job for years, but he had not cared enough to ever be good at it.
Circumstances force him to play that role again, now. Ophélie is sitting on an armchair opposite the settee he’s on, and they are having some of Berenilde’s high quality coffee — though Archibald suspects that Ophélie’s mood, as well as his, would profit from something stronger. But he has stopped drinking on Berenilde’s request. If he’s going to be living under her roof, he can at least grant her this much.
Ophélie had come through the living room mirror, a cumbersome, ostentatious thing kept polished just for her, after she showed some scruples in using the one her old bedroom; Archibald later found out a servant had been driven to suicide right there, by the Knight, as punishment for impersonating her. There were plenty of gruesome little details like this in Berenilde’s mansion, secrets which he sniffed out little by little — untouchable rooms and trinkets full of bitter history. If not for Roseline’s lively temperament animating the house (quite literally, at times), Archibald would say that Ophélie’s wish for a museum in the Pole had already become true after all.
He felt a little like a museum trinket himself, more often than not: an old thing, now useless, with a lot of past and no future at all. He had been sitting in the living room, finding amusement in making himself miserable with such thoughts, when the sight of a face emerging from the mirror shook him out of the familiar morbidness of ennui.
Ophélie had narrowly missed Berenilde, Victoire and Roseline, who had just gone out to the Embassy, presumably to call on Patience, his not-sister. Some of the pain of severance dulled with time, with the help of his goddaughter — but the void left by the loss of his whole family cannot be filled by one little girl, even if she’s Farouk’s own heir. And even if it could, it would not be fair to her, as Archibald is finally learning to admit.
When he looks at Ophélie now, he recognizes the same loneliness that gnaws at him. Thorn was only a man, but a big one, larger than life... and just like Archibald’s own not-family, he is not dead, but gone from Ophélie’s life all the same. He has passed away but she cannot mourn him: Archibald knows very well how impossible it is to exorcise a ghost that still lives. Not that Ophélie wants to: it seems she sincerely believes she can have her husband back.
They sip their coffee and talk. He gets to brag about Victoire, with more enthusiasm than he’s capable of mustering for any other topic; they discuss her growing up, her developing abilities, her improving speech, her possibilities. He, the godfather, and she, the godmother. He is aware of the importance of such a connection, and it brings him some warmth — despite the sense of guilt that nags at his conscience, because yes, he had taken this from Thorn, too. Knowing how useless such a feeling is doesn’t make it less irritating. But he sees Ophélie very clearly now, a small form in comfortable clothes, with a moony face, growing curls, and a void inside her heart almost as big as herself. They are both walking around with distinctively shaped holes in their guts, trying to fill it up with Victoire, with whatever family and friends are left to them, with the future. With each other.
He touches the mark between his eyebrows, like it itches.
Conversation falters, and an uncomfortable silence creeps in. Their mutual loneliness is a hungry monster, eating up the words until they have none left. Besides, he’s sick of his own voice, and of the carelessness of speech in general. Speaking seems like such a waste of time, sometimes. Time drags, thick and slow. His smile becomes unsustainable. Out of his usual apathy, Archibald feels anxious, responsible, oppressed.
There is only one type of comfort he has ever known how to offer. He hasn’t indulged in it for some time now, but he feels like he must do something. It’s a simple fix, but the aftertaste is always so disappointing, and he knows... He knows he should not. Not Ophélie, never Ophélie. But he will die if he doesn’t do anything to ease the tension. Because Ophélie might be small, but he feels like he will crumble under the weight of her presence, and the feeling increases when he notices, by the way her scarf clutches her hat and small valise, that she will not be staying with them long. A childish part of Archibald always resents her for leaving; another part, even more childish, almost wishes she would just not come anymore.
He scratches his forehead again, his whole body feeling unbearably light against the heaviness of Ophélie's silence.
Oh, be done with it!
‘My dear’, he finally asks her mind directly, without words, ‘will you let me comfort you?’
Her eyes remain down, and she sips on her coffee so naturally that for a second he wonders if she has heard his message at all. Then, when his knuckles are white from grasping the armrest with too much force, Ophélie stands up and goes to him.
He lets out a breath as tension leaves him. By force of habit, his eyes are already looking for hers, his hands reaching for her embrace, and he is at the same time relieved by the perspective of this all-too-familiar respite and wanting it to be done with it, like a chore. And she comes between his arms — but awkwardly as, instead of undressing or sitting on his lap, she settles next to him on the settee, and rests her head on his chest, breathing deeply and hugging him like she’s about to drown.
Archibald is at a loss. A moment passes, then another; eventually, he brings his arms up to a hug and, hesitantly, oh-so-carefully, rests his head against hers, as if they might shatter like fine porcelain or cheap glass if he doesn’t take care. He shivers when she nuzzles, her glasses dragging a bit at his already ruined shirt. Then she stills, and he can feel her heartbeats: one, two, three. thirty, a hundred.
They do not move.
It must be the most chaste way Archibald has ever been touched by an adult, and, paradoxically, it might be more intimate than anything he has ever experienced in his life. How, Archibald wonders, can this closeness exist, without minds touching? There must be a different kind of transparency at work somehow, because he is overcome with a nameless emotion that is definitely not his own; something foreign and overwhelming. So he tightens his arms around Ophélie's small form. She is trembling, and her crippled hands rub his back. He can tell that she is crying.
He listens to her, wondering at her sobs. Archibald can't remember the last time he cried.
He doesn’t know for how long they stay like this. His mind is blissfully blank when he buries his face in her curls and presses a kiss, innocent and unpreceded, to the crown of her head.
Archibald wakes up to Victoire eyeing him curiously. His neck hurts from sleeping in a strange position; belatedly, he realizes Ophélie is still in his arms, the both of them tipped back against the backrest, a warm blanket over their bodies. Concluding that Berenilde and Roseline had found them like this gives him a strange emotion; belatedly, bewilderingly, he realizes it might be embarrassment. How odd. He wants to get up, but he is loath to make a movement that might wake Ophélie, so he settles for beckoning Victoire.
After a moment staring, she climbs up his lap and rests her head against them both, in that silent way of hers.
Archibald breathes deeply. They must get up at some point, and when they do, the void inside them will be there, relentlessly gnawing away at whatever’s left of him.
But for now, with their weights combined, he remembers what it is like to feel solid.
Or maybe he learns.