A/N-I still own nothing.
Without a word, he had just put down her tea—tea with honey and lemon, her favorite—beside the bed among the mountain of books piled up on her bedside table, and gone downstairs again looking so sad that Elinor had a shockingly guilty conscience.
-Inkdeath, page 115
Tears bit at the corners of his eyes. He wiped them away with his sleeve, laughing at himself.
Crying. Very heroic. Just what she'd love to see the man who loves her doing.
That is, if she would even think about it.
Why wouldn't she just go see a doctor? She was pining away, and it wasn't getting better.
When she had first brought the books up to her room—or had him take the books up—he had prayed with every part of his heart and soul that things would look up. She wanted her books. Perhaps that meant that she was getting better.
But, no. She had used the books as a means of digging herself deeper and deeper, choosing the most heartbreaking tales, the saddest, most depressing stories, all in an attempt to make her situation seem all the more hopeless.
Did she honestly want to die of longing?
Darius was beginning to wonder.
He'd tried. He'd tried so hard to get her better. He'd offered to bring her new books. She had turned them down when she saw that they were comedies. She begged for Shakespeare, and he had brought her the volume, suggesting all the funny ones. She had flipped to a tragedy, and had cried for hours. Darius had snuck the volume out of her room as soon as she dozed, which was lucky, as that had been the last time she'd chosen to close her eyes.
The doctor. He'd pleaded with her, imploring her to go to the doctor. She had refused, and later had come downstairs, much to his pleasure.
That pleasure had evaporated when he realized that she had only come down to tell him that he was "by no means allowed to call the doctor, or she'd kick him to the curb".
A tear splashed onto the glass case. He wiped it away.
Orpheus' handwriting lurked just behind the glass. Darius squinted, trying to read it, but he couldn't past the think glass cover.
He lifted the cover up, and took the paper out.
His eyes devoured the words—the first words he'd read in days, he'd been so busy—and he found his lips moving, forming them, though, thank goodness, no sound came forth, and thus, no damage was done.
Subconsciously, he rewrote the piece as he read, inserting the words that would take them there.
Idiot! You'll hurt her! You'll bungle up the words, and she'll have a flat nose, or a limp, or no voice.
Elinor's horrified voice made him start, like a guilty child, or like Mortimer when he was caught sneaking chocolate out of the cupboard.
He quickly put the paper down, and soon he was stuttering, trying to explain himself, rambling off into a lecture on how interesting Orpheus' style of writing was.
Elinor muttered grumpily as she went to get some more books—Darius saw lots more Shakespeare (a couple of biographies on him too), The Song of Roland, and a few other depressing books. He wondered if, were he to dare to slip a book on depression in her stack, she would read that too.
Her threats and hopes brought a smile to his lips. That was Elinor.
The smile faded as she called herself "a batty old woman". He wanted to tell her she was wrong, but no words came. Instead, he looked down at the paper again.
He was reading the paper. His lips moved as, entranced by the words, he read it eagerly, devouring every letter with that passion that made him so different from the shy man he was at all other times. When Darius read, he transformed into someone else entirely. When he read as he was reading now—fervently, his eyes running down the page, sometimes hopping up to reread a passage, his lips slightly apart in the pauses that he took from mouthing the words.
She could have stood there forever, watching him, but her venomous mouth ran ahead of her, and before she knew it, she had snapped at him, and he stood before her, the same, shy, gentle Darius she knew so well—she loved so well—stammering some nonsense about Orpheus.
Do I scare him that much? She wondered. Apparently she did, as he was stuttering as badly as he had in Capricorn's village.
She marched to the shelf and yanked various books: Shakespeare. Both plays and a few biographies. The Bard was her greatest friend and ally in these depressing times. The Song of Roland. A few books that she didn't even bother to read the titles of, as she was too busy glancing at Darius out of the corners of her eyes.
A strange look was on his face. He was thinking, and, judging by the way he was looking at her, he was thinking about her.
And it made her happy, to know that he was thinking of her, even if it was probably a plot to yank her out of her state.
Knowing Darius, though, he might just be regretting having to put down that piece of paper.
And that made all her happiness disappear.