author's note: takes place approximately nine years after gametime, corellary to my long primfic (farthest corners of the sky) of which only the first part is completed. relevant info: the black family lives in nisan. rue cohen was the head of the battling committee in nortune, and in my universe she: (a) knows the black/blanche family from school in solaris and (b) winds up in nisan eventually, too (yeah, it's a long story).

himmlische

"Why did you choose the name Rue?" Jessie asked her one evening, eyeing her steadily over a game of chess.

She blinked, the black queen still in her hand. The question had come rather out of nowhere; when he opened his mouth to speak she had honestly expected small talk of the weather. Harmless, appropriate conversation.

("Mr. Black, aren't we expecting a blizzard?"

"Why yes, Ms. Cohen, the drop in barometric pressure indicates a snowstorm coming."

"My goodness, perhaps I ought to be getting back to the Cathedral soon."

"Oh, not at all, why don't you stay for coffee?")

...Well, perhaps maybe not so harmless, after all.

She shook herself. "Why Rue?" She stalled for time. "Why not Rue? We all have our regrets." She graced him with a wry smile.

His gaze didn't waver, not even when she set down her queen and checked his king. "I thought maybe you'd picked up some Shevite," he said after a moment. His fingers twitched one of his knights to intercept her next move, though his eyes barely touched the board.

Rue scowled, but it had been a neat move, and the white knights on either side of her queen made her want to laugh. "I've picked up a lot of different languages," she said diffidently, sacrificing a rook to avoid a checkmate. "Only natural to know some Shevite, after working there for years." She watched him through her eyelashes, artlessly coy. "I speak a fluent Kislav."

"I'll bet you do." Their knees bumped under the table; he was warm, and she wondered if it was uncharitable to think it hadn't been an accident. He rolled a pawn between his thumb and forefinger, set it back down again. "Then you know that 'ruhe' is a Shevite word, right?"

"I hadn't thought of that," she lied, and scraped her chair a little closer to his. To get the firelight glare out of her eyes, of course. To avoid the thin wintry draft starting to come in under the door.

He adjusted the board casually, broad hand steadying the pieces. "That better? Right. It means quiet, doesn't it?"

She had to smirk, resting her chin in her hand as she considered the board. "I'm so demure, it suits me, don't you think?"

As she expected, he rolled his eyes, and she felt satisfied. He said, not lifting his eyes from his examination of the game, with the sound of a man who was wondering aloud, "I think it might also have connotations of 'peace.'"

She turned his unasked question on its head, her voice a little sharper than she meant. "I think it has connotations of 'privacy,' as well," she snapped.

He chuckled, hand half-raised to appease her pointed look. "All right, all right. The world is positively full of rue."

"Maybe I chose the name after the plant," she said, low in her throat, imagining a field of the sharp-smelling herb, and a grey windy Kislev afternoon. "You just never know." She tried to sound as if she had given it no thought at all.

He moved his pawn one square instead of two, and they sat in silence, contemplating it. He'd wanted to play black-- for obvious reasons-- but she hadn't let him, saying she would always think of him as Blanche. Now, the black shape of her resistance flanked by pale ivory chess pieces, she was at last well-matched.

"For all I know, it's from the Old Nisan dialect-- you know, for 'street'?" He smiled easily, folded his hands in front of him, waiting for her move. "We all have our secrets. I won't ask you any more questions."

She should have let it be; she'd gotten him so nicely to acquiesce. But she couldn't help but ask a question of her own, falling like snow at midnight in the fire-warm stillness. "...Who wouldn't want a name that means peace?"

Raising an eyebrow, he generously said nothing at all.

So relieved that he hadn't called her on her apparent contradiction, she had to look again at the board-- her king was in check, and she hadn't seen it coming. Somehow, though, she found she couldn't bring herself to mind. Either move she saw only delayed the inevitable. With a gentle smile happening on her face that she wasn't quite aware of, she put up one last fight: her last knight in the path of the advancing white queen.

One thing in his favor, he wouldn't rub it in if he was winning. His smile was almost infectious; she had to remind herself to be cross at his upper hand in the game.

"It makes me think of that song."

Again with the unexpected jumps of logic. She frowned, watching him take his time with moving his queen. As if they didn't both know what move he'd make; she doubted he would miss the opportunity and botch his victory. "What does?"

"Ruhe," he said, as though it were obvious. "You know the song?"

"Oh yes, I'm so musical," she said, under her breath, but he was undeterred.

"No, the one about the winter night, and the cold, and the bright calm." He stretched out his legs and their knees collided, again, their feet tangled under the little wooden table.

"Yeah, I think I know the one," she murmured, shifting in her seat. She was too old for such indignities. "The solstice song from Kislev."

"How's it translate?" He squinted when he was thinking hard, skin crinkling at the corners of his too-blue eyes. She wondered, irrelevantly, if they were wrinkles from laughing or grieving, and decided that it didn't matter. "...Silent night."

Awkwardly she realized it was, and very. She hadn't been paying attention-- they'd been playing all afternoon, and now the night was stealing in, frost creeping across the windows. And neither of them had been watching the chess game for an awfully long time.

She shivered slightly, putting her hands on the table, readying herself to stand. To leave. Not like her to lose track of time. "I'm sure we know where this is going," she said lightly, gesturing to the board. "I'm not trying for best three out of five. No need for me to stay." She rose stiffly; too many hours in the same wooden chair couldn't be good for her bones. "Congratulations." Her throat was dry.

He wasn't one to leave a game half-played, so even though she conceded his victory, he moved his final piece anyway. Checkmate.

But he wasn't one to leave a conversation unfinished, either, and the sound of his queen clicking against the chessboard was inaudible under the rough noise his chair made, scuffing the floor as he stood.

She didn't wait for him to catch up, moving for her coat, hung patiently by the door.

"Leaving so soon?"

"It's going to snow," she said, peering out the window at the heaviness of the flat grey sky. "It's snowing."

He rested a hand against the doorjamb, casually blocking her path. "Looks like it could get nasty."

Idle talk about the weather, at last, too late. She shivered in her coat, pulling her collar close around her throat. "Hmph. Doesn't it always?" she muttered, through her scarf.

"It's not snowing in here," he offered, his mouth a little unsteady on the words.

She gave him a hard look. "It's half an hour uphill in good weather, and it's already full dark. You ever tried sneaking past a nun intent on maintaining curfew? You'd think I was trying to break and enter, coming to their inn just past dinnertime."

"You really want to walk through the snow." He was damnably impossible to argue with when he wanted to be.

"Better now than when it's three feet deep," she was losing conviction. "I've heard about Nisan blizzards, Jesiah, you can't dissuade me."

He ran a hand through his hair, mussing it and making it stick up at odd angles, a scruffy snowbank. "Not even with coffee?"

She deflated with a little sigh. First, to lose two games of chess without putting up a fuss. And now, now this! "Depends on how hot it is," she couldn't help but grin, her short laugh getting tangled in her scarf.

He caught the fringe of her scarf in on hand, extricating her from it with surprising delicacy. "Oh, it'll be hot. I can promise that." His smile looked sheepish for a second, eyes flicking to the battered tins of coffee on the shelves by the stove. "But it might be a little... old."

At that she really laughed, and poked him in the chest. "Aren't we all?"

"Are you saying I'm old, mein himmlische ruhe?" he said, and it was his turn to laugh at the face she made.

"Nothing 'himmlische' about me," she said, but her voice was softened, and she couldn't meet his eyes. "You should know that by now."

"No, nothing," he agreed, warm and tall and smiling. "Nothing at all."

~fin~