( the sear of her hand takes him aback, crying out to the scent of his own burning flesh in the air, this fantastic expulsion of alina's frenetic energy the closes that circuit running through him. electricity licks the insides of his veins — but it's more like sunbeams, like radiation, dragging him back to that bitter point of relife, the meeting between suffering and ecstasy. his body hurts to the point of shaking, but his soul feels elated — alina's burns like a mother's cradle, a rocking symphony, a welcome home, little star, come nest in my arms. paul thinks he might be sick with the clashing intensities of want inside him: to get away, to burn up, to die, to let alina have him. ultimately, he stumbles out of her reach and breaks the burn, clutching at the stinging sore of his bubbled flesh, too new and too strange for something as simple as pain.

what he isn't too strange for is alina herself. if he doesn't know anything, he knows his duty to her — their promises are more than just ingrained on his mind, now. they're woven in between the threads of his existence, sewn in like a secret pocket in the breast of a jacket. alina is his. he is alina's. she mustn't be allowed to kill herself for the alluring heights of power — this is something paul knows so painfully well that it hurts more than anything else, seeing the repeating pathways of decisions they've made in both their lives, mirrored images of inevitable pain. he won't let her. he won't let her. )

No!

( he snaps it back, wobbly legs forcing him to throw himself on her, hands wrapping around the her little birdboned wrists and not minding if that sears him too — he clenches tight, unyielding, ready for the blow out. )

Get it together! You're a soldier, Atreides-Starkov, now act like it. ( it's a growl, purposely rough — she doesn't need her little mouse right now. she needs reality. ) You don't get another option. There is no other choice. You are strong enough to stop this, and you will, because you must. Now, Alina. Stop!