( her first thought is a fool's one: alia atreides has never looked less like a monster. she looks — newborn kitten frail, like something left out in the rain for too long, shivering on alina's plush carpet and waiting to be given a home. shakily, she thumbs aside a marigold curl of hair matted to alia's forehead, to prove to herself there's no teeth and thorns waiting for her. )
You're not my monster. ( she stares until her eyes spill over with fat, leaky splashes of tears. until alia's silhouette goes blurry and haloed in candlelight, like it's testament to that fact — a truth that she's more golden thatches of sunlight than aleksander's shadows stirring between trees, cold and dead and barren as the withered thing in his chest. i don't know what you are, alina thinks miserably. she only knows one fact to be unfailingly true, and that's — ) You're Alia.
( quivery, her chest trembles around a wet intake of breath like she's choking on it, all waterlogged eyes and lungs. i've looked, says alina's burning, unfaltering state. i've seen. i am not like everyone else. i am not like anyone else. which is how she knows, without question: )
You're lying. ( it lacks the sharp cut of an accusation. it's just — butter-knife dull, resigned to weariness. ) You want it to be true, but it won't be.
You're going to wonder what must be so horrible that I won't share it with you. It's going to eat away at you until you either resent me for it, or fear me because of it. And then — then, one day, you'll say it's because I don't trust you, and I won't even have the decency to deny it.
Because I don't. I don't know that I can.
( because i'm not so sure i'm not the monster here. because — if mal can barely stand to look at her, how can she ask anyone else to endure her? she huffs out a humorless sound, embittered — with herself, with every disgusting secret and hideous truth mal had neither been equipped or unwilling to understand. everything she's kept hidden to keep the image of herself in his mind unruined.
uselessly, she scrubs a furious hand over her sternum, like it might loosen the tight knot that's formed. like it might smooth out her choppy, heaving breaths long enough to feel less like she's drowning underwater, long enough for her to choke on: )
I don't think I know how to trust anything anymore, and I hate that more than I hate this.
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You're not my monster. ( she stares until her eyes spill over with fat, leaky splashes of tears. until alia's silhouette goes blurry and haloed in candlelight, like it's testament to that fact — a truth that she's more golden thatches of sunlight than aleksander's shadows stirring between trees, cold and dead and barren as the withered thing in his chest. i don't know what you are, alina thinks miserably. she only knows one fact to be unfailingly true, and that's — ) You're Alia.
( quivery, her chest trembles around a wet intake of breath like she's choking on it, all waterlogged eyes and lungs. i've looked, says alina's burning, unfaltering state. i've seen. i am not like everyone else. i am not like anyone else. which is how she knows, without question: )
You're lying. ( it lacks the sharp cut of an accusation. it's just — butter-knife dull, resigned to weariness. ) You want it to be true, but it won't be.
You're going to wonder what must be so horrible that I won't share it with you. It's going to eat away at you until you either resent me for it, or fear me because of it. And then — then, one day, you'll say it's because I don't trust you, and I won't even have the decency to deny it.
Because I don't. I don't know that I can.
( because i'm not so sure i'm not the monster here. because — if mal can barely stand to look at her, how can she ask anyone else to endure her? she huffs out a humorless sound, embittered — with herself, with every disgusting secret and hideous truth mal had neither been equipped or unwilling to understand. everything she's kept hidden to keep the image of herself in his mind unruined.
uselessly, she scrubs a furious hand over her sternum, like it might loosen the tight knot that's formed. like it might smooth out her choppy, heaving breaths long enough to feel less like she's drowning underwater, long enough for her to choke on: )
I don't think I know how to trust anything anymore, and I hate that more than I hate this.