blue_ajah | (no subject)

"It is," she confirms. "There were others, subtle in distinction but clear all the same, but that was the first I noticed."

"He was waiting for me by the fountain, and asked if we might speak."

At least he asked permission.

Cooper takes a sip of coffee.

"He said..."

She looks up at him.

"I had not noticed, not truly. I knew that I had not seen him at Milliways in some time, but -- I do not know how, but I had not realized the extent of his withdrawal. Had you?"

He shakes his head. "I haven't been in Milliways in... quite some time. And we had something like a gentleman's agreement. I wouldn't have noticed, and I certainly wouldn't have gone looking deliberately."

A gentleman's agreement?

She does not ask, but the look she gives him is briefly very searching before she nods.

"It appears that he has been occupied elsewhere with his work within the Dreaming," she tells him. "So much so that he did not notice, precisely, when the connection between Milliways and the Dreaming ... dissolved."

A beat of silence.

"He wishes to reestablish it, and sought to determine if that would be an issue of concern."

Cooper blinks.

"And he asked you." A question.

Moiraine nods again.

"He did."

Why?

Cooper can't ask that. He knows he can't.

"It was kind of him to offer," she murmurs, after a moment of silence that threatens to grow. "He has been gone for long enough to have missed... certain things."

There is something complex in her tone as she says that.

"I told him, in essence, that he was welcome to return there."

Cooper can't ask.

"Okay."

Steadily.

"I wanted you to know," she says. "Because I thought you would wish to."

The faintest hint of color rises in her face.

"And because I need to ask you a question, as well."

Cooper raises his eyebrows in silent inquiry.

"Do you believe that I am a woman out of my world and time?"

His brow furrows -- and he doesn't answer right away.

Slowly: "Moiraine, I'm not sure what question you're really asking me. Or what the importance of it is. Because technically speaking -- you are. You weren't born to this particular United States of America, or even this planet. And you know that better than anyone." Beat. "Does that bother you?"

And what does Morpheus have to do with that?

She stays where she is, a small woman, poised in demeanor, watching him carefully.

"Perhaps it would be better to ask, does that bother you?"

"No." Cooper's answer is immediate and sincere. "Why would it?"

A small gasp of a laugh escapes her, but there is no humor in it.

"Why would it, indeed."

Cooper knows Moiraine's rules.

"Why would you think it would?"

He's got to be better about that.

"It is not that I think it would, it is that I fear it might."

She turns away, back toward the table, and stands beside it looking out the window.

"I do not think that Morpheus's presence in Tel'aran'rhiod here in this fashion tonight will have caused any detriment to Twin Peaks," she says, finally. "You need not be concerned for that."

To recap:

Cooper received a phone call from Moiraine just past five o'clock in the morning, with details she didn't want to get into on the phone, and when he showed up at her house she told him before he had his coffee that she was talking to the ex-husband who, in one aspect, did its damndest to ruin his life from childhood -- and then she began to speak cryptically about her own status in Twin Peaks. And then she turned away from him.

Dale Cooper is a patient man.

"But you want to leave."

With him.

"No!"

At this she whirls, the motion still graceful even in its speed, and stares at him with shock clear in the dark eyes.

"No," she says again, after an instant's startled silence. "No, Dale. I do not want to leave."

"I want to stay." Another breath, and she elaborates, very clearly:

"I want you to want me to stay."

And that's the thing. He can't assume -- he has never been able to assume -- that a declaration like that means what he thinks it means. What it might mean. What it could mean.

Because there have been hurdles and there have been barriers, the first and foremost being that for quite some time, Moiraine was under his care, or in some way his responsibility. She stayed in his apartment. She worked as the dispatcher at the station. It would have been deeply unethical -- immoral -- to say or do or think anything. And even if that barrier no longer exists -- and it doesn't, because Moiraine has her own job that has nothing to do with Twin Peaks law enforcement, and her own living space, and she isn't dependent on him any more --

There's still the small matter of the ex-husband.

This town has a bad history of marriages gone poorly, and new flames snuffed.

Not to mention Cooper's own history.

And Dale Cooper cannot, must not assume.

And yet --

"Of course I want you to stay," Cooper says, holding very, very still. "You've built a life here."

She clasps her hands together in front of her at her waist, tightly.

"Is that the only reason?"

It is not even six o'clock in the morning. Dale Cooper is two sips of coffee in for the day.

This is extremely unfair.

"What do you want me to say, Moiraine?" Only now does his voice take on a glimmer of frustration. "What are you trying to make me say?"

"Nothing that you do not wish to."

She lowers her hands to her sides again.

"I do not want to impose. Or to presume. But I thought that, that perhaps you might..."

She breaks off there, her color heightened once more.