Sylus, You Cannot Turn Disappearing Into a Bet

I can tolerate a fair amount of nonsense from Sylus. I have demonstrated this with embarrassing enthusiasm. But Razor's Dance asks me to entertain a bet about him disappearing from the heroine's life, and suddenly I would like to confiscate the word bet until everyone has calmed down.

We are flirting. Why does this now require terms and conditions?

The heroine says she'd rather be far away from him. Later, he proposes that if he returns safely from a dangerous trip, he'll leave her alone. If he doesn't return, the result will be the same. I understand why the scene has teeth. A complaint she could keep throwing at him has become a possibility she might actually have to live with.

I also understand why I want to interrupt him.

There is something terribly exposing about finding out that your favorite complaint has limits. I can imagine being fond of someone whose arrival disrupts every sensible arrangement I have made. I might object at length. I might mean several of the objections. That doesn't necessarily mean I want the entire person removed from my life, along with whatever inconvenient pleasure I take in his company.

The interesting question is where irritation ends and rejection begins. The frustrating thing about Sylus here is that he turns it into a wager before they have agreed what either of them means. I don't find that magically fair because he sounds calm while doing it. Calm people can also propose very silly arrangements. They just make you feel underdressed when you argue back.

That composure is doing a lot of work on me, admittedly.

But I want room to say that the scene is effective without calling his approach exemplary. The stakes make the heroine's feelings harder to dodge. They also put her in a miserable position. If I were being asked to discover how much I cared about someone, I would prefer an experiment with fewer opportunities to wonder whether he was still alive. We could start with missing a lunch. Build up slowly.

The feet have made a decision.

After worrying news and failed attempts to reach him, she sees him across the street and runs to him. I love the loss of composure in that movement. Whatever careful explanation she might have wanted to offer hasn't caught up with her feet.

There she is. No elegant defense prepared. Just the overwhelming need to get close enough to know.

A scene like that doesn't need me to pretend the preceding silence was a considerate gift. Relief can be beautiful without retroactively making the worry pleasant. I think the reunion is stronger when both feelings remain in the room. I want her to be glad he's there. I also want her to have access to her temper once she's established that she can use it on somebody who is actually present.

She never agreed to that.

And she does. She challenges his lack of contact and points out that she never agreed to the bet. That objection matters to me more than the cleverness of his proposed arrangement.

You cannot announce the rules, leave, and return expecting somebody else to congratulate you for following them. Especially when the other person was still standing at the part where they hadn't said yes. I would become spectacularly tiresome on this point. There would be clarification. There might be repetition. He would learn how long a person can sustain eye contact while asking whether they ever agreed to anything.

I like her better for refusing to let his wording decide what happened. She isn't obliged to keep performing indifference just because she'd been annoyed with him earlier. Feelings can become clearer. A person can change what she is willing to admit. That doesn't mean she has to accept every theatrical condition somebody attached to the discovery.

Her request that he not disappear again feels much more intimate to me than winning would have. Winning leaves somebody on the other side. Asking him to stay gives away what she wants, with considerably less protection around it. I like the courage in that, particularly after all the effort they put into looking as if the other person is merely a passing inconvenience.

He accepts her terms. Now we're getting somewhere. I don't need an elaborate punishment scene, and I don't want her concern to become another contest he has to beat. I want the possibility that they can stop arguing about who started caring long enough to do something with the fact that they did.

My fondness for this moment comes with that irritation attached. I'm not going to peel it off to make him easier to praise. Sylus is more interesting to me when his charm can get him into a conversation it cannot finish on his behalf. Let the heroine answer him. Let her be relieved, angry, and visibly unwilling to lose him without having to sort those feelings into a respectable order first.

The next time he wants to make a bet, I suggest something with a dessert at stake. He can look unbearably confident over a slice of cake. I assure him the effect will survive.