( a soft snuffle, half-smothered by the rustle of sheets, breaks the quiet — alina flips onto her back with all of the thudding grace of a capsized duck. not the wet snort of a sob, shockingly — just a whisper of resigned laughter, clogged in her throat, like she doesn't know how to unstopper it. not after the ruinous catastrophe of the last week, the forgotten note of how to let joy rise without guilt to join it. )
It's blasphemous to deny a saint's perfection, ( she drawls, bland as biting into a stale cracker left at the back of a first army ration's tin. sankta alina is of stained glass eyes and a marble spine, never bent, never misshappen. ) Blessed be her light, her sacrifice, her seasonal martyrdom. I could have your head.
( her eyes drift, as if she's reading the engraving on a epitath — the legend they tried to make her. the truth doesn't offend — it just means paul sees her where she's chipped, eroded by her own effort to chisel herself into an ideal, the years she spent sanding herself down into something beloved, otherworldly, righteous. it just means he loves her, anyway, without taking his hands to her to shape her imperfections into something more palatable. a simple kind of love, for all that the pair of them aren't.
she doesn't say that perfection appears different to every eye — he has to know it as well as she does. mal had wanted her smaller; the darkling had wanted her so vast that she would eclipse ravka in her shadow, blot out the sun. perfection is only a story for those naive enough to still disappoint themselves. she shifts again, nosing her way onto his hip, plunking her head there like an overgrown cat. a deep breath, and the release of it, slow like a stirring wind. )
I think I've hurt everyone I've loved. They've never quite forgiven me for my mistakes. ( softer: ) It's inevitable, isn't it? Maybe that's the price of loving anyone. But maybe that's also the proof — that we try. That we're brave enough to care, even knowing how much it might ache.
no subject
It's blasphemous to deny a saint's perfection, ( she drawls, bland as biting into a stale cracker left at the back of a first army ration's tin. sankta alina is of stained glass eyes and a marble spine, never bent, never misshappen. ) Blessed be her light, her sacrifice, her seasonal martyrdom. I could have your head.
( her eyes drift, as if she's reading the engraving on a epitath — the legend they tried to make her. the truth doesn't offend — it just means paul sees her where she's chipped, eroded by her own effort to chisel herself into an ideal, the years she spent sanding herself down into something beloved, otherworldly, righteous. it just means he loves her, anyway, without taking his hands to her to shape her imperfections into something more palatable. a simple kind of love, for all that the pair of them aren't.
she doesn't say that perfection appears different to every eye — he has to know it as well as she does. mal had wanted her smaller; the darkling had wanted her so vast that she would eclipse ravka in her shadow, blot out the sun. perfection is only a story for those naive enough to still disappoint themselves. she shifts again, nosing her way onto his hip, plunking her head there like an overgrown cat. a deep breath, and the release of it, slow like a stirring wind. )
I think I've hurt everyone I've loved. They've never quite forgiven me for my mistakes. ( softer: ) It's inevitable, isn't it? Maybe that's the price of loving anyone. But maybe that's also the proof — that we try. That we're brave enough to care, even knowing how much it might ache.