NOTE:

The title of this chapter is a quote from a scene in Hamlet, in which the titular character argues with Ophelia. In saying "I am myself indifferent honest" he considers himself to be a reasonably good person, but then goes on to deny his blind faith in his own goodness, going so far (as is to be expected from Hamlet) as to suggest that it would be better if his mother had never given birth to him. So, yeah! Just a casual tone-setter for Tom's mood! All good things, guys, all good things…

Short timeline note: the actual RADA production of Hamlet opened on the first of September, but for the sake of fitting more into this story, I've pushed the date of the first performance back a week or so. (still semi-angry that there was no recording of that performance… I would KILL to go back in time and see it. Literally, KILL. Just kidding. Haha. *side-eye*)

Okay, onto the chapter!

Chapter 28: I Am Myself Indifferent Honest

TOM

The leaves have just started to change and fall the day I sit waiting for Holly on the steps below Benedict's flat. It's a week into September and I've donned a jacket and scarf; but these are less armor against the cool and breezy weather than mere ornaments of insecurity and shame.

Never in my life have I been more nervous. So much more seems at stake in this moment than even in so many moments spent anxiously waiting in narrow corridors outside audition rooms. I am sure that when I speak to her my voice will shake, and it will be my own voice, not the partly shielded voice of a character. That my face will betray my emotions (my own face, and my emotions, not some practiced series of expressions) and my heart will betray my work (work I've done on my own, irreplaceable soul, not in order to convey the illusion of someone else's)...

Behind me the door crackles open and Holly appears, her boots stepping lightly down the steps to meet me. I feel myself standing up. Her strong little body is covered in baggy, comfortable-looking clothes, subtly creative details (an embroidered vine around the wide hems of her trousers, the placement of the buttons on her blouse, the pattern in the fabric of her shoulder bag) echoing her thoughtfulness and her free spirit. I've never seen her dress this way before. Usually, it seems that all she has in mind when choosing her clothing is what will conceal her body most thoroughly. Now, she seems to have found a way to feel safe and comfortable, and to hint at who she is underneath, to express herself, at the same time. Saoirse has coerced her into going out to the charity shops, then. Good.

My mind anticipates a few moments of awkwardness, but reality promptly undoes my pessimism. Holly's arms are around me. She's giving me a hug.

To say I've been feeling touch starved lately would be a vast understatement. All the physical connection I've had has come through the staging of Hamlet; but it's not real, and it's not deep. This is both, and its effect is so potent that I can nearly forget that Holly is the one giving it to me. Through her selfless embrace, I know… Holly, rightly, is not the type to forget. But, as Ben had said in the coffee shop on our last meeting, she is the type to fully forgive. Even when, perhaps, it would serve her better not to.

Before I fall into the trouble of trying to determine whether or not I am worthy of that purest form of forgiveness, my senses are arrested by a quiet sniffle. I think she might be crying; but then she pulls away, pressing her nose with her sleeve. "Sorry," she says quietly. "I have a little cold."

It's the stage of the season at which jumpers and coats are pulled out of the closet after not being looked at for many months. On my walk here I realized that I left a packet of tissues in my jacket pocket the last time I wore it. I only noticed in passing, and reminded myself to take them out on getting home later. But now they have a purpose.

"Thanks," she says, when I hand them to her. "It came out of nowhere this morning."

"Are you still up for the gallery?"

"Yes!" she says with hoarse happiness, her eyes brightening above the white flower her hands make of the tissue. We decided on the gallery over the phone yesterday. Neither of us has stood silently and looked at art in too long, and it lends the perfect kind of anonymity, because everyone around us will be staring at the walls, not side to side.

Holly finishes wiping her nose and then smiles at me. And for a moment her hair gets caught in a breeze that draws a whisper from the leafy trees and causes a beautiful stirring among the ones already gathered on the sidewalk… and the sight holds me in a state of briefly physical, and then lingeringly emotional pain. Seeing her draws my heart to her; I can't help that. But in this breeze I almost slip, almost lose all the progress I've made. I knew before coming here today that actually seeing her again for the first time since our conversation on the park bench would threaten the illusion I've developed over these past weeks; the illusion of no longer wanting her. I've done my best to prepare myself. But actually feeling the sweet strength of that threat is intimidating and, like a siren, makes me want to yield to it.

The aching loneliness of a cello is what I feel in my heart when I am with her, and when I am away from her. She is like the moon: not always seen, but always in control. What a more beautiful world it would be had I been allowed to buy her flowers on my walk here; were I allowed to plant a kiss on her forehead. The difference between that world and this one seems, in this moment, quite small. But when the breeze passes, the ravine widens again. Just wide enough to keep me from jumping across, but not far enough to shield me from the ache of the view on the other side.

I let these thoughts pass through me now so they won't come back in greater numbers later. Luckily, none of them stick; and I recover my step. I smile back at her and we set off together.

Walking next to her through the city, I'm haunted afresh by a lately dormant insecurity; that she feels threatened by my body. An insecurity that has always made me more deliberately gentle, quiet, and slow around her. Traits that are true of my innermost self, only brought out more deeply in their sensitivity when I use them for the purpose of helping her feel safe. But just as I start to settle into the old habit, I realize that it is not needed anymore. She is comfortable and joyful in body as she walks, no longer forcing herself into a perpetual cower. My heart hammers and I have to double my resistance from before to ward off the effects of her brilliant light.

I wonder what has changed inside of her over the past weeks. She smiles to herself at random, and though I've always been able to read her easily, her emotions and intentions are more clearly visible than ever. I can tell she's quietly wondering about the nature of my own feelings. But there's no pressure emanating from her, and no discomfort. The feeling she gives off is synonymous with the image of a calm, solitary child testing the water at a reflective lake's edge, in the same season through which we stroll.

"You seem very well," I tell her.

And her happiness doesn't even falter under the stress of a compliment. "Autumn and London are doing me good."

I listen, rapt, as she tells me the classes she's taking this semester, which she hasn't even started yet but which she's looking forward to with such passion that it's as though she's already been filled with all the revelation they have to give. I can hear through her every syllable, the passion in her heart for knowledge, and for the subjects she's chosen to devote her time to, and then for everything she's not studying academically, but still yearns to experience in the world. And I feel myself being pulled along with her, fully and freshly remembering my own passions and wanting to introduce her to them, and wanting to learn more, more, all about hers, in return; though there are so many that we already share…

In the velvet red silence of the gallery, I realize that I'm paying more attention to the art of her hands (clasped with wonder near her gently moving chest) than the art hanging on the walls. This self-consciousness, this self-analysis, is a curse I must purge myself of. How am I to get better when I am hardly myself, hardly present with her, and hardly recognizing her as mortal, for all my circling insecurities?

Eventually we find a slow rhythm, each of us able to tell when the other is ready to move on to the next work. And on our way through the gallery there are only a few interruptions to this rhythm; which makes it easy to move with her without awkwardness, and difficult to distance myself from her soul in the moments when she differs, when she expresses something silently, without meaning to.

Once, she is particularly drawn in by an abstract painting, something Dutch that could depict water, or could be a child's eye, or the wing of a dove, a fleck of stone under a microscope, a planet… And when I start, in adherence to our rhythm, to move away, she touches my arm and I stay, looking at her, lost in her infinite possibilities of symbolism as she draws a tiny notebook out of her bag and writes something in it, slowly, in her fittingly tiny script. Then we move on, but of course the rest of our slow passage through the many rooms is consumed by the thought of what she might have written.

We forego the sculpture exhibit (too risky; the pieces are placed in the center of the room and fellow observers would have an open view of our faces), but in doing so we've tempted fate. For in a room of impressionistic paintings, I am noticed by a little boy holding the hand of his father. When I first look down in response to the feeling of his eyes, he seems to recognize me, likely as Loki, I guess from his age. But then something shifts; and something else gleams through those full, innocent eyes. A knowing force, the wisdom of a child, as though the boy can see straight through my scarf to my guilt, and doesn't care for or understand its source, but knows the weight and sincerity of the guilt, and judges it quietly.

I'm held in a state of breathlessness in the next seconds; but of course the illusion doesn't last. The spell is broken, the boy smiles. I put a finger to my lips and he nods his head, continuing to grin as he refrains from tugging on his father's arm. Out of the corner of my eye, I glance at the man, and then focus again on the painting, taking the first step away a few moments before the rhythm dictates I should.

The third and final interruption of the rhythm comes when we stop before a Pre-Raphaelite painting of one of the most common subjects of the time: a waiting woman. The long-haired woman stands in a pale light with a yellow apple in her hand, the darkness of the stained glass window hinting at the chilly season beyond. There's a look of slowly draining hope on her face, so finely executed by the painter that the longer you stare, the more pale and tired her eyes seem to become. I silently admire the skill evident in the hardly visible strokes and mentally note the name of the artist, who I'm surprised I haven't heard of before.

I'm so absorbed that it takes a moment before I register a movement in my peripheral vision… But when I do, I realize that it's Holly, slowly crossing her arms over her chest, her bent fingers gripping her shoulders as though moved by the very feeling of isolated cold so evident in the painting. The tension in her breathing binds me to the present moment and suddenly a tingle of more-than-awkwardness chills my body from the inside. I feel like I should somehow give her privacy. Of course the painting means something different to her than the enchantment that has reached out to me. Perhaps it has reached out to her, too, but in a different tone. After all, the painting is not too far off from a mirror, in Holly's case. Holly and the woman share a fundamental quality; their state of waiting. Of course it would be all too easy for Holly to project the presence (or lack thereof) of the person she's waiting for upon the dreariness of the painting's light, and the forlorn eyes in the painted woman's face… all too easy to see her own suffering in the slightly parted lips, in the white fingers clutching the fading golden apple…

This reflection is the hand that picks me up and returns me to my place.

All of this, my desire for her, is a poem that keeps writing itself inside my head, not reality. Benedict is reality. And suddenly, this realization, not at all an aching one, fills me with the paralysis of calm, taking away the power that infected my heart as soon as I saw her earlier. I'm reminded of the things I've told and taught myself in my time away from her, and it seems more plausible that I will succeed in what I promised her over text: that I am ready to be her friend again. The quiet, throbbing feeling is not removed, but the panic that trips over it is.

This feeling is the very same one that I often got in the beginning of my career, when I would be denied even a callback for a role I had been wanting. There would be a moment of pain, and then relief at the knowledge that there is nothing to wait for anymore; that all I can do is start over.

I feel better, more myself, at once; but Holly's tight posture doesn't change, her gaze still set in mistrust and resignation upon the woman in the painting. Looking at her, I decide that maybe it's getting time to go, and gently tap on her shoulder to inquire with a raised eyebrow. She looks at me with slightly cold eyes (not because of my interruption, I can tell, but because her soul has been infused in part with the windswept exile of the painting's color scheme) and nods her head yes, when she deducts my intentions. Gradually, we make our way out.

After the gallery, on our walk down the street, I venture to ask what she wrote in her pocket-sized notebook.

"Just a little poem," she says, as though I've reminded her of something she did a year ago. After the silence of the gallery, filled with my own thoughts, the sound of her voice is even more welcome than usual. "I don't know if it was anything special."

I smile to myself, knowing something about her. "If it was nothing special, would you allow me to read it?"

She instantly caves up.

"It was special, then," I say.

That rare combativeness sparks behind her eyes, bringing back the color that was frighteningly drained of them as she looked at the Pre-Raphaelite painting. "Fine. You can read it."

This isn't what I was intending or expecting. I merely wanted to prompt her to acknowledge the worth that her work, however simple, holds for her. The thought of actually reading the poem is frightening to me. It's too personal. I don't want a repeat of last winter.

"No, it's alright. Really. I respect your privacy."

But she must take this as a further challenge. "But I'm offering to let you read it, if you want to."

And I realize that I do… and even as she says it she takes out the notebook and holds it out for me to take.

We slow down in our walking, meandering to the side of the walkway where a little stretch of leaf-covered dirt lays stamped between the cobblestones and a black gate. Before we've fully stopped she has opened the notebook to the page in question, and I have looked down to see that I'm holding it, a small, precious part of her soul, in my hand.

She clutches the strap of her bag with both hands. I look down at the page and read the little poem, making out her small writing with care. I will read it only once. I will hold my breath while I do.

The words enter my soul, providing the exact feeling (but even more developed, even more curious and twinkling) that the Dutch painting of something water- or planet-like had gently struck me with, as I stood before it. Of course it is beautiful, and terrifying. Immediate. The sort of poem that would linger in one's head the whole day. And because it is written by her, it and its echo will linger in mine for the rest of the week.

Keeping my promise and reading it only once, I separate myself; I hand the book back to her and then return my hands to my jacket pockets. She's holding the book, somehow, in both her small hands, looking up at me with a nervous, open expression, and I realize I should say something.

"You're a brilliant imagist, Holly."

Her eyes, refilled with their color, now, spark with joy and tears for a moment. "Thank you," she whispers, and quickly hides the notebook at the bottom of her bag, her hands trembling. I wonder if I've upset her.

"I mean it."

She stills herself, and whispers a smile. "I know you do."

We buy sandwiches from a street vendor and eat in the park under a tree. Surprisingly strong light waves through a gap in the leaves, keeping our spirits warm under the breeze.

After an easy verbal recollection of our journey through the gallery, the most captivating pieces and so on, she asks me how Hamlet is going.

I feel that perhaps it would be unwise to share this sort of thing with her. Maybe this is what will officially undo all the progress I've made… but then I realize that this would be wrong. Holly is my friend, and I am hers, however tense and conflicted that term may prove under further scrutinization. It would be false of me to hide myself away, and unfair to her, and counterproductive to my goal to be genuine with her, in spite of my urge to lie and stay as quiet as possible for fear of providing my feelings with a dangerous spark.

So I convey the essence of my recent struggle to her, honestly and with a bit of the over explanation I sometimes fall prey to. But she listens and watches my eyes with patience the whole time, never wincing even when I wince, only growing in her warm, focused thoughtfulness. I admit the emotional difficulties that playing Hamlet poses, and the underlying insecurities about my acting that have been dragged into the light by the role.

For a minute after I've stopped she just sits, looking now at one of the roots of the tree, now at her hands. I watch her, wanting to know what she's thinking.

"I know how this is going to sound," she says at length. "But I think you're being too hard on yourself. Tom… you're one of the best actors in the world." My heart jolts with panic at that, but she looks at me with a grounding sincerity. "You are. And… You give such meaning to your life, and to the world, even when you feel… When you feel like you haven't achieved quite enough, that's just a sign that you've already done an awful lot."

I feel my eyes brimming with tears. It's my turn to handle the part-embarrassment, part-pain, part-appreciation, part-disbelief that I treated Holly to a few minutes ago on the walkway, when I complimented her poetry. I let the emotions roll through me for a moment, just barely keeping myself from hiding my face, and then I give her my sincere thanks, first with my eyes, and then with my words.

We sit quietly for a minute. And then I ask her about how her short visit to New York went.

Something in her shoulders tenses slightly, though she answers the question without verbal hesitation. "I got to see my aunt…"

At once I consider that it may have been taxing for her to deal with seeing her aunt in her current state, and after everything that has happened this summer… Only to find out, as she continues to speak, that she'd actually persevered through something much more painful: seeing her mother. I can barely believe it, it seems so far-fetched. Yet I am right there with her, swearing I can feel the cold knives that she felt while sitting across from a strange yet somehow, painfully, familiar woman in a diner booth.

There is no word to describe how much I want to untangle all of the badness she's suffered. At times, I find that my empathy and love for Holly is so strong that its force actually occludes the passageways that lead it to other people, and back around to myself. Were I removed from Holly, I could feel for the mother in the scenario as much as for the daughter. But as it is, I feel a surprising anger towards the former. Holly had made an effort to meet her halfway, and she'd repaid her by offending one of her most significant life choices, being with Benedict. I empathize completely with Holly's inability to contain and calm herself after finding out that many of the assumptions she'd made and held about her mother were wrong; that she hadn't known about her father's alcoholic and abusive tendencies before she left. But, in my eyes, this doesn't change the fact that abandonment is abandonment.

I can see Holly grappling with what to think; whether to feel bad for shunning her mother, or to seek some semblance of forgiveness and solace in the fact that, under the circumstances, she had a legitimate right to do so.

At no other time, at which I have been completely myself, not shrouded in a character, have I felt such anger. I am angry that this has happened to her. What she's already gone through is too much to begin with. It would have been better if her mother simply melted into oblivion and never reached out. I can see her suffering drawn into her face, into her body (I remember holding that poor little aching body in the hospital bed a month ago), and my heart yearns to explode.

This time, I just put my hand on her arm. "Holly, I'm… so, so sorry. Of course I don't understand either side of it, but… as I perceive it, everything you did was within your rights. And I can see why… I don't think you were in the wrong."

Her eyes are tormented and tired, but that ever-burning resilience still shows behind them; miraculous, after all this time. She nods her head, accepting what I've said. And I feel relieved even though I know I haven't changed anything; haven't made anything better.

"Thanks," she says. "I… have to figure that out on my own, really. But it's a nice thing to hear, from you."

She changes the subject, telling me that she's started to learn the violin, and has also started writing again, which is making her feel better than she's felt in a while. Not just poetry, but also the second draft of the book I read over the winter holidays. I remember it, of course. It was the very thing that made me fall in love with her. And even the moment after she mentions it her face gets worried, and she tenses up. Clearly, she associates my feelings with that winter.

For a heartbeat there's a look on her face so desperate and confused that I think, if this moment were prolonged, it wouldn't be a stretch for her to stand up and run away. What I wouldn't give to go back to that evening, to take back the kiss I forced on her. It ruined so much. But her fear lasts just a second before she forces herself to be calm, and seems to assemble herself in preparation for something she's been planning. My heart speeds up. This is the moment I'm going to be found out.

She looks down as she speaks, the first time she's advertently avoided eye contact today. Her voice is quiet. "I just wanted to ask, just for a second… I know you said, over text… I just want to know if you're still feeling… Um…" She presses her hand to her chest and pats it once, silently, gently, and the meaning behind the gesture is all too clear, so clear that it pierces my own chest. She needs to know, of course, if I'm still feeling the same as I felt on the park bench. And she deserves to know, too. This is the moment I get found out… unless I tell the truth of my own volition.

The truth is some semblance of: "I'm… still working on it."

Her eyes open wide, not in fear, but in some complicated breed of heartfelt concern. "What do you need me to do?" she asks. "I'll do anything. I want to… help." And the terrible thing (which she seems to realize with a resigned flush, the moment after she's spoken), is that this is part of why I love her in the first place. And I do love her. Beneath all the shifting tides of self-control and numbness and passion, the seabed that exists far beneath it appears unshifting. It will move over time, but at the present rate it may not change enough in my lifetime. And by the time that is over, it won't matter, anyway.

I'm reminded of the feeling I got when looking at the painting in the gallery, and then upon reading Holly's poem. And I realize that what I saw in the painting was that blue, rocky seabed, that deep place that hardly changes. I saw my love for her.

It takes me a minute to assemble my words, and then to turn my throat from stone into an instrument capable of speech. "Just… be who you are. This is my job, not yours. I don't want you to worry about it, or me. But Holly, I promise, I'm not going to… I will not take advantage of you again. And I am so, so sorry that I did."

She shakes her head, managing to make eye contact again. "I told you the truth when I said I'd already forgiven you. And I trust you. I know you wouldn't… and I know you didn't… really… do it consciously. It's okay now."

"And you won't worry?" I feel tears sparking in my eyes.

"Only if you don't worry about me." She smirks a little. Of course we both know we're going to worry about each other. It's how people like us work. But it's fun to pretend; and I know, too, that by 'worry,' we mean something more. She holds out her hand for the shaking. "Deal?"

"Deal." I give her my hand in return, and she gives it a businesslike squeeze, with a note of friendliness underneath. I feel her soft, dry skin, and the warmth of her flesh, and the delicate necessity of her bones. And then I let go.

"What have you been reading lately?" she says, once we've finished our sandwiches and have stood up from the ground under the tree, since the sun shifted away from its previous angle, leaving us chilly.

A small fluttering enters my chest, a reminder of my sillier side. "Why, War and Peace, of course."

"Again?" she exclaims with a grin, a sarcasm and a brightness in her eyes. She's the only person I know who fully understands what I love about Tolstoy, and loves it, herself, too.

"Constantly, I'm afraid. But I've just heard for the first time that they've made a series based upon it."

She makes a deeply suspicious, but not at all dramatic expression. "I have no trust in adaptations of Tolstoy."

Nevertheless, at three o'clock, after a walk around the park, we end up in my apartment, planning to give it a chance, neither of us opposed to staying up late to finish it if it happens to be up to our standards.

She comes back from the kitchen where she made popcorn while I set up the show. And in settling in, there's an instant when I'm too close to her, accidentally; when I brush against her in reaching for a pillow. "Sorry," she says in passing. And suddenly I have a jolting feeling, one of the feelings I thought I would be safe from after my revelation in the gallery, and its solidification in the park.

Sometimes in the dark, corrupting expanse of the night, I have wondered what would happen if Benedict were to be hurt. You see, where would Holly collapse if not in my arms? But that phrase, delivered to my brain, somehow, by my gut, carries too much of the blackness of Nabokov; and always I have quickly and successfully banished such thoughts, often forgetting their existence until their next appearance, some other night. The moment Ben becomes involved in my line of thinking, it is fearfully easy for me to forget my panicked feelings. It is in the moments when I am alone, or alone with Holly, that I entertain these other thoughts that only bring me pain.

And when I brush against her, for just the slightest of moments, Hamlet comes over me as he sometimes does at the beginning of the night. Somehow, he is even worse now, in the afternoon, and in Holly's presence, when his pallor feels so unnatural, such a threat to her warmth. Flinching away from the contact of our skin, some flickering sense of a suicidal thought is superimposed over the rushing static of my mind. It frightens me, and Holly (who had barely seemed to notice it when my arm grazed her shoulder) senses that fright.

Now, she looks at me with wide, emotional eyes, grabs my hand with both of hers (oh… such searing pain), and speaks in a worried voice. "What is it, Tom?" She presses my hand and my throat constricts. "What just happened?"

That moment her phone starts to buzz with an incoming video call from Ben. I feel so watched when things like this happen, as if I'm constantly under emotional surveillance; as though my innermost thoughts have set off a tripwire somewhere in the universe, and this is the first ripple of warning to come back to me.

I realize, between the moment when I register the importance of the call, and the moment I react to it, that I really had been overcome by some other entity, and that the random suicidal thought had been frightening and powerful, and not entirely myself, but still partly myself, something that crept out from the dark parts of myself that I've been utilizing in my work recently. It's the feeling of being a child at night, and certain that something (perhaps yourself) is in the room with you, and help is far, far away. I can feel my heart beating rapidly at the center of my cold, dry, paralyzed body, and a genuine sense of fright seizes my brain. It's one of the terrible moments at which creativity is a curse, when I feel nothing short of possessed. But I can't beg for Holly's help, can't clutch her close and tremble, within any semblance of reason. I wonder, outside of myself, what she does for Benedict when he's feeling this way, as I know he sometimes does when faced with more difficult roles. Is her presence enough to completely heal him and keep him sane? Is it something more trivial, like tea? How does it feel to fall asleep next to her after a trying day of work?

I pull my hand out of her grasp and look straight ahead. At first, I can see her looking at me nervously in my peripheral vision. But she is inevitably distracted by picking up the phone. I manage to assemble myself ("thoughts, down to my soul") and then there's Benedict on the screen, calling in a full blue tuxedo from the Toronto premiere of The Current War.

He's in what looks like the corner of a crowded room, with post-red-carpet written all over it. It's ten in the morning, there, and the day's duties and socializations are just getting started, but the present business is clearly enough for Benedict, who is impressively full of energy. "Hello, love," he says into the camera, his eyes sparkling at the sight of Holly; Holly, the queen of his world.

In no time at all, a different part of myself takes the wheel. I don't feel as though I'm being false, it's just that I've switched almost too quickly from one part of myself to another.

"Hello, Ben," I say, watching myself pop into the frame.

"Tom!" he says, clearly happy that I'm keeping my promise to check in with Holly. I had used that request partly as motivation to get over myself and reach out to her again, but haven't thought of it since. Now it's brought back to mind, I try not to read too deeply into it. There is so much that the three of us don't know about one another; there are things that each pair that can be made from our trio would not want the excluded party to know… we are a conflicted trio, to be sure. But for the moment, Ben is glad to see that Holly is with me, and I have to allow that to soothe me, even if it means putting my blinders on to both past and future. "What have both of you been up to today?"

Holly answers for us both, her eyes and voice brighter than they've been all day, which is saying something considering I understood her gestures and attitude to be evidence of more happiness than usual. "We went to the gallery, and now we're going to watch War and Peace. There's a recent miniseries."

Ben raises a singular eyebrow. "Well, well, it'll be hard pressed to earn passing marks from you two."

"Indeed," I chuckle.

A moment later Tom Holland's voice can be heard, "Did you call me?" and then he looks over Ben's shoulder at the camera, appearing in the frame with two chocolate covered strawberries on toothpicks. "Oh!"

"Hi, little T.H." I say.

"Hi, big T.H. Hi, Holly!"

"Hello… Tom? Holland?"

He smiles bashfully, handing one of the strawberries to Ben, who pops it in his mouth and then twiddles the toothpick. "That's me. It's nice to meet you."

"You, too! Keep a close watch on Benedict for me, okay?"

Looking at Ben, he raises his eyebrows and grins. "Wow, I've never gotten that before."

Ben smirks. "Alright, agreed, a taste of my own medicine, but only for today."

I can tell that Holly doesn't quite get the joke (Benedict is usually the person appointed to keep track of Tom and making sure he doesn't spoil anything when promoting the Avengers films) but she smiles widely anyway. I see how warm her face and eyes are, just from seeing Ben through the phone. Her whole body emanates waves of gladness. I can sense how completely she loves him, and how terribly she misses him, and again I get that feeling of apathetic helplessness, of choicelessness. I have no real power here. All of these worries and moral whirlpools exist only inside my head. Holly and Benedict were born to love one another. In the state caused by these thoughts, seeing her like this makes me feel numbly happy.

Someone comes up to them and says something, to which Ben responds, his voice nearly too deep to be understood over the phone. "I have to go," he says after another moment, returning his attention to us.

Tom's hand flashes onto the screen for a moment as he calls "Bye!" and then it's just Ben on the other end, looking after Tom for a moment before gazing with all his heart into the camera.

"So long," I say to him, easing the process by excusing myself from the frame so that he and Holly can share a semi-private farewell. Holly, taking the cue with what I perceive to be some form of appreciation, curls up around her phone.

"I love you, Holly," I overhear.

"I love you, too. You're wonderful, and I'm proud of you."

"I'll try to text you later, but I probably can't call until tomorrow."

"You're on the plane again, tomorrow, honey."

"Christ, I am, aren't I."

Something feels twisted in my stomach, but I ignore it, occupying myself with looking at the cover of the show waiting on the screen. The neckline of Natasha's dress appears made of fused bones, a skull in the center. I fall to observing it so thoroughly that I completely miss the tail end of their goodbyes. And when I next become present in reality, it's from the sound of Holly setting her phone down on the coffee table.

"Sorry about that," she says, her voice too exhausted to tremble, though I know she could easily be crying if she was alone.

"No need to apologize."

In just a few moments she's become sidetracked and sad, pinching the hem of her shirtsleeve. "Sorry," she whispers, sensing my attention. "It's just… I'm working really hard on not missing him. But I still am, badly. I know it will get easier once school starts."

I can at least go through the motions of reassuring her. "Holly, I am absolutely sure that it will."

She nods her head, still convincing herself.

Clearly it's better not to continue talking about it. Talking directly about Benedict could only cause upset, outward or otherwise, for us both. Instead, I pick up the remote.

"Ready?" I propose; and in the slightly blue light, she perks up slightly, smiles, and nods her head yes.

We watch all six episodes of the series and share the popcorn. I let myself become absorbed in the world of the story, and it's a relief to find that I can easily slip into enjoying and analyzing at the same time, and not thinking so hard about what Holly's reactions are, and how she's looking, and the feeling of her beside me…

After the final episode has ended, energized though it's ten o'clock, we remain sitting on the couch for over half an hour, lost in discussion. We decide at length that we're mutually on the fence about it, but obviously enjoyed it enough to sit all the way through. It wasn't extraordinary, especially not when compared with Tolstoy's writing, but it managed to be visually satisfying, and we both deeply approved of the casting of Princess Marya, who is Holly's favorite character in the novel.

Finally managing to stand up and separate ourselves from the story, I convince her to let me walk her home, and to put on one of my coats (even the smallest dwarfs her, but at least it will keep her warm) for the journey.

It is very cold but lovely outside, truly getting to be the season in which Gothic novels and late nights gazing through the windows seem more natural pastimes. Street lamps light up the quieter roads with a soft and eerie warmth, leaves skitter across the pavement in the numbing breeze, and the distant sounds of traffic and wind are ghostly.

We part where we met, on the steps in front of Ben's flat. She thanks me, we hug again, and only at the last moment does she take off my coat and hand it to me before stepping inside.

I walk back to my flat alone.

In the shower, I reflect on the evening and spend a few minutes feeling poorly about myself… even crying. But then, after a while, my body is refreshed by the warm water, I am warm and comfortable in my clothes and in my bed, I feel a bit better. I had known before today that this wasn't going to be easy, but at least I know, now, where I actually stand. In isolation from Holly I was able to imagine that I was over it. At least now I'm in reality again, lucid and thus having the chance to improve myself.

(And yet even as I think this I know more deeply that things seem hopeless and that I am still trapped in my love for her… Because, the very renewed strength I use to make these reflections and to salvage some optimism from my threadbare heart… This strength was given to me directly by being with Holly today…)

Author's Note:

Greetings, lovely readers!

I was planning for this to be a longer chapter, but realized that to continue into Holly's perspective from Tom's would make it way, way too long (even for me, which you all know is saying something). Besides, I really wanted to get a little something out for you! You more than deserve it after all the wonderful encouragement you've been giving me. (My endless thanks for that.)

I will be working on chapter 29 soon.

Thank you for reading!

On_Errand_Bad

6 October 2021