Of Sound Mind

[cipherspeak]

The cane he still carries scrapes across the stone floors of Club Castle, signaling the King's arrival even if the King had wanted to move silently. Only a few more weeks, he tells himself as he gives the cane a baleful look and then casts a more curious - and more concerned look at the door.

Argine is no longer Queen, but she still knows how to issue a summons. These days, when she does - it isn't the best of news.

But perhaps he's just being pessimistic. People tell him he has a tendency to think the worst.

He knock; he waits, and when he hears her voice, he steps inside. "You asked to see me?"

Comments

[theless]

It isn't the best of news. It also isn't the worst of news, she suspects, in its own morbid way. She has firm faith that Elisha, of all people, will have an understanding of that balance.

But it isn't the best of news.

She had been, until recently, able to be properly up and at her desk when meeting people. These last two weeks have seen her solely confined to her bed. Her voice when she asks him to enter is weak, exhausted even by the soft words.

Her smile, at least, is still the tiredly wry thing it's always been as she gestures lightly to the chair at her bedside. "I'd just... like the chance to see some things... settled between us."

[cipherspeak]

People have been whispering to Elisha for years now, even if it doesn't seem that long in the grand scheme of things. Certainly people have been whispering to Elisha about Argine. Certainly they've become more agitated, more concerned, and finally more accepting - in that particularly final way.

Argine Rainmayr is a dying woman. That's well-known.

He slips into the chair and gives her a slight smile of his own. They haven't been without their friction over the years, he thinks. There was always something a little wild about him that argued with Argine's more proper ways. "I think we've been a little more settled recently, haven't we?"

[theless]

She doesn't reach for his hand. Anyone else, she might have. Any other conversation, there would have been a possibility. But they both know why he's here, and why he's here is something that requires her fingers to cling to themselves as tightly as she can manage.

Which isn't very tightly. Not anymore.

"We have." Her lips press together briefly before she settles with her head more properly facing him. "And we'll be much... more so by the end of the month, mm?"

If that weren't already largely clear.

"The doctors asked that I review my... last will and testament."

[cipherspeak]

Ah. Well, not a conversation he can politely banter his way through, then. He didn't think he would. He suspected, in fact, that it would have to do with this very subject. Both of them are too close to Eileen for it to be unrelated. Argine, as proper and by the book as she is, would want Elisha to know which of Eileen's absentee uncles would have charge of her.

He didn't much care to think of it.

But he nodded, short, brief. "I'm sorry that it's come to that time," he says. "How can I help, Argine?"

[theless]

They haven't always agreed on, well. Most things, really. That doesn't mean Argine intends to insult the man's intelligence by doing anything other than cutting rather straight to the point.

"With Eileen." There isn't much energy to her face these days, but tightness does come to her jaw. "She still has... more than half a year before she's fifteen, and... will need someone even after that. In... in my will, custody is meant to go to Maximilian."

Which is a name she can't say without bitterness.

"I doubt he'd actually take her, and... I'd hate to put Tobias in that situation. Or Rachel, really." Which leaves, clearly. "But I didn't want to change anything... without asking you first."

[cipherspeak]

He and Maximillian are not exactly each other's biggest fans. Elisha finds him a bit pompous; Maximilian finds Elisha a bit of an upstart. It isn't a combination that close friendships are built on, and it probably doesn't help that Elisha leans more Spade than Club on occasion.

Still. This is...unexpected. He would have thought either Tobias or Rachel - Rachel has been in Argine's circle forever, after all. Even Joanna O'Neill before him, though she and Argine aren't so close, he supposes.

"...You want me to have custody?" He says after a moment. If he sounds hesitant, it's the disbelief.

[theless]

"She loves you."

It's that simple, really. There's more to it, but this late in everything, it's also absolutely that simple.

"And she'll be safe with you." It might, actually, be the first plan for her daughter's safety that she didn't fear would backfire completely. "She'll have something like... stability, in spite of everything."

[cipherspeak]

Parenting had never been something he planned for himself, certainly not for a long time - the spectres of his mother and Sebastian Dietrich had accounted for that. He wasn't even sure he'd be good at it; it was different, now. As ill as Argine was, she was still the primary parent. He merelyy filled in the gaps.

"I love her too," he says. And it really is that simple, despite the coiling tension in his belly in the face of something unplanned. He wouldn't have been able to leave her with Maximilian or Tobias; he would have made some arrangement with Rachel. "Have you talked to her about this?"

She would be fifteen soon, after all. A matter of months. And even Outside, that was more than old enough to have an opinion on her future.

[theless]

The shake of her head is careful, eyes closing just for a few seconds before she can meet his again. This isn't an easy conversation, after all, for all the easy affirmation from the King settles her heart that much more.

This is the right thing to do.

"Not yet. I didn't want to... get her hopes up if you... didn't want to."

[cipherspeak]

He nods. "If I'm what she wants..." he begins, and pauses. It's a lot of responsibility, what he's about to take on. Responsibility he would have never chosen for himself. But isn't that his life so far? What makes this so different.

Well, that it's a person. That it's Eileen.

"If I'm what she wants, then I'm honored, Argine."

[theless]

There's no distinct sigh of relief. There's just a slightly calmer sort of exhale among all the careful breaths.

"Thank you. That... makes all of this easier."

It would make talking to Eileen easier, certainly. It would also make the idea of leaving her daughter behind easier.