Work Text:
Can still feel eyes, hear breath, scent work's perfume (and lust, and fear: gentler tempers are not markèd so). Am blind, not senseless. Know well am watched, feared, hated and desired. And, oddly, loved. Is harder, knowing, though not so hard as was. Vanessa understands enough, to work within negotiated bounds, a partnership of care, regard, of use, mayhap becoming friends. Mildmay is generous, unpitying, refreshing kind. Julian, young Richard (neither sons nor students, yet more than obligation groweth there), e'en Felix are not unattached. Gerrard loved not Kay but an idea. Yet Murtagh -- Ferrand -- loveth me. Is puzzlement indeed.