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"Do you ever regret it? Getting this one done?" Elo asked, poking at the small elm leaf following the line of Farren's naked ribs.
They've both of them fallen in the canal this time – drained for dredging – and are covered in thick, stinking muck. This time, however, Elo is the Captain and Farren her Second, so the only person with authority to yell at them is Mistress Fallight, the Housekeeper currently doing just that, as they stand by the water pump in their skivvies, being hosed off.
"No. Why would I?" Farren says, between bouts of pump-water slicking through his hair.
"Because I came back alive."
"Which was the fifth happiest day in my life."
"Only the fifth!" Elo says, in mock amazement; squawks, then, as a grinning Farren throws a wet rag at her.
Later, when they are deemed worthy of being let back inside and permitted to dry off in front of the huge kitchen fire, Farren flicks his cigarette ash into the embers and says,
"I've been puzzling it over, but I still don't got an answer. Maybe you can explain to me why I'd regret having a tattoo done for you, all cuz you turned up alive?"
Elo shrugs from where she's carding her fingers through her hair. "I thought, maybe, you'd be... upset. That you'd put the cart before the horse, and so regret having a indelible mark to honour someone who hadn't actually died."
"My Bug," Farren says, eyes soft in the ruddy glow of the hearth, "I would never regret displaying my honour for you, dead or alive."
"Oh." Elo dimples, dips her gaze as a wash of heat fills her cheeks. "Okay."
The fire murmurers like a contented kitten.
"Did you get one for me, when you thought I was lost in the North?" Farren asks.
Elo shakes her head with a rueful smile. "No. You didn't give me the chance. I held out hope for so long before I finally caved to the belief you were dead, and then you came waltzing into my office like it was any other workday." She glances over, a merry glint in her eyes. "Fifth happiest day of my life."
Farren coughs out his laugh.
Elo goes back to carding through her hair, teasing out tangles in its thickness.
Farren blows smoke rings over the coals, his expression turning slowly inquisitive: "What will you get? When I go?"
"I thought you were planning to live forever."
His chuckle once more morphs into a cough, hacking through him. "You might be a halfpint but we both know I'm a half-life," he says, once recovered. "Have you even thought about it?"
Elo squeezes the last drips from her hair, mumbling something as the embers hiss and steam.
"S'pose you don't have to, if you don't wanna," Farren says.
"No, I do. Of course I do. I just... I don't know. A cigarette?"
Farren gives Elo a long, fatalistic look. "How poignant."
"Are you sure you want it here?" The tattooist asks, running a gentle finger down Elo's bare ribs. "It'll hurt..."
"I know." Her voice is rough, eyes hard. Face ashen and grim. "But not as much as why."