[It comes out light, like the potential disapproval of Jessica doesn't ache at the back of Alia's throat with every breath. Would she approve of this, of the dalliances of her children, of their attachment to a girl from another world? No, because the purpose, the goal, the Holy War lies languishing in favor of Alia's gifts beneath Alina's bed.
Let her disapprove. She is only here in the echoes Alia carries in her mind, her unasked-for burden. Let Alia ease that lifelong torment as she pleases, with stolen kisses and stolen cake.
The mention of divinity sparks a thought, a curiosity -- are they so alike, in the end? Had the echo of something within Alina been so close to home? The thought is an amusing one, but Alina deflects it with practiced ease, and Alia...does not press it. For the first time in her life, she lets it lie. Let Alina speak it in her own time. Alia finds she doesn't want to push.
Instead:] Because I like you. Because I've forgotten how to be just another girl, and you make me think I could be.
And because Paul is funny when he's trying to beat me at something.
( is it so terrible, to want something for yourself? it's a hypocrite's question. alina smothers the thought in the cradle before she can consider every sacrifice ravka has wrung from her, every failed attempt to have something unspoiled by a higher calling. which is to say: she understands it, that need to cling to a hopeless want, to have somewhere to wearily set aside sankta alina and just — be. be alina, the girl that is just a girl. not because her existence calls the faithless to convert themselves to believers, but because they've bestowed her loftier titles than saint and sun summoner.
titles like friend, titles like beloved. titles that give her the privilege of teasing, through the sudden starburst of warmth in her chest: )
[The pause has Alia wanting to reach out, fretful as a child in the dark, reaching for a candle, for the drawn shades, wanting to bring the sun in. She wants to find Alina's thoughts, the presence of her mind, wants to press herself against it. There's an aching sort of longing that feels like sour fruit in her throat, and Alia stands, sits, paces.]
I'm better at giving gifts. Always have been. He's better at most things, but I'm catching up. Not that he needs much motivation to spoil you, though.
I like seeing him like this. The Paul I know is so tired, so weighed down by everything he is. He's himself, here. I'm grateful to you for that, too, Alina.
( it's as tempting as any breadcrumb trail to follow, promised answers found at the end of a path. she ignores it, despite the impulse to latch onto alia's hints, ask her what she means by paul's burdens. it isn't fair to paul to uncloak what he's left hidden, even if it makes her skin itch with old fear; more than that, it isn't fair to alia to use her to lure those well-kept secrets from their hiding place, made a pawn by alina's wariness.
maybe it's a little cowardly, in the end, no better than sticking her head into the sand, in case of the truth of what he is — what alina is — violently shifts the landscape of what they're becoming. she hides in it, anyway, tucked away in her little claimed corner of normalcy. )
It doesn't seem fair to take all the credit for it. He's let me exist as just Alina, so long as he's just Paul.
I know a little of what it's like to live under the weight of someone else's expectations. It costs a person something when the world around you asks you to be everything to them. Well, almost everything. The one thing they never ask you to be is yourself.
I won't ask you to be anyone else. You could be just Alia, if you want to be.
[Perhaps that's what Alia means -- Alina does not push, she does not insist upon an answer, does not pull the great and terrible and loathsome purpose from Alia's aching chest. The thought of it makes something shiver within her, the idea of showing such horror to someone who is becoming something, becoming important.
The only friends Alia has had were long-dead Reverend Mothers, were hardened Fedaykin who taught her to bleed life into the hungry sands of Arrakis, were her sad-eyed, soul-weary brother. The only care she had was for this last, Paul before anyone, Paul above the entire universe, a billion trillion lives sacrificed on the altar of the Kwisatch Haderach.
But the fact of it: she leaves pastries and sweets beneath Alina's bed. She imagines her sucking sugar from her fingers, smiling with cake crumbs on her cheek, bright eyes, soft lips, tangled curls. Alia imagines the sacrifices she would make, on this new altar building between her ribs.]
It seems to be a very mutually beneficial arrangement. I won't say too much, it's Paul's to tell, but you're very clever, Alina. And you have seen him, spoken to him. I think anyone could feel he's special. [Sibling bias, ingrained worship, loyalty that predates Alia's bones themselves, but she means it.]
That isn't a promise I've ever been made. But I [A pause, long, lingering.] I want that. I've wanted it for a long time.
( if a tree falls in the woods, does anyone hear it? if alina rolls her eyes until they nearly pop from the sockets, can alia sense it in the universe? for what it's worth: alina still obeys, sticky-fingers in chocolate residue, smearing sweet treats into her phone screen. sucks crumbs from her fingers, sugary delight tingling on the roof of her mouth. )
You're bossy.
( it's short-lived. alina can taste citrus turn to ash on her tongue, for just a flickering moment, before she forces herself to swallow it down. special, alia says, and it only needles at the questions she's stored away beneath floorboards of whatever she and paul are building to collect dust. out of sight, out of mind. because it feels like a warning, now, though she's uncertain if alia is beckoning her to look closer, or — if it's an entreaty: treat him delicately. he has already been mishandled. )
He is special. He's made himself special to me. I don't need to know the rest for that to be true.
( the rest doesn't matter, she could say. it isn't strictly honest. the darkling has taught her to fear what skeletons hide in a closet, what truths are swept beneath a rug. it's just — she can't imagine paul's is an ugly, grotesque match for the secrets aleksander keeps.
she types. thinks better of it. reconsiders, again. finally: ) You speak about Paul like you aren't important.
( or — not as equally important.. alina frowns. ) But I'd like to know you, too. If you'll let me.
[Perhaps she does, or perhaps she is simply filling her thoughts with recollections of Alina's bright mouth, her soft eyes, the sweetness of her palm against Alia's cheek. Whatever the reason: she is pleased, purring like a great cat, collared and content at it's master's feet. The image is an amusing one, and Alia turns mid-strride to seek out the kitchen again, thinking of fruits and candies, of her arms overflowing with tribute for Alina.]
I am bossy, but I am right as well. Mostly.
[In truth, Alia thinks also of other ways to please and service this sharp, sweet girl, the ways a saint's own penitents would seek to delight her. The ways Jessica most disapproved of, protective of her daughter's womb as the divine thing it was. Would she begrudge this enchantment, or would it not register since there was no risk of Alina befouling the preciously-guarded bloodline? Who knows.]
He would tell you, if you asked. I think it means something that you haven't, yet.
[Paul would not begrudge Alina anything -- Alia is conscious of that already, knowing her brother as she does, how fervent and heated he burns for those he cares for. But even if she were to ask for all the tangled threads that weave the tapestry of Muad'Dib, the fact would remain: she had not demanding it from the outset.
At this last, Alia pauses. She nearly says I'm not, not in comparison, though it is and isn't true at once. There is the divine and there is the abomination. There is Paul, and there are all others. But, finally:] I'd let you, Alina. If you wished it. I don't think I could refuse you anything.
( it means — that she's a fool, maybe, grasping onto her hope like a tiny sprout of green in a desert. if she had learned her lesson, it would be a dessicated thing, but that alternative — to feel her trust dead and wilting in her chest — frightens her more than the chance paul might disappoint her.
she exhales, a leaf-shaky breath. )
I don't want to have to ask him. Paul will tell me in time. I have to believe that.
( it's stupid, she knows, like — leaping blindly into a chasm, unsure of how far it drops, and expecting to land without scrapes and broken bones. still, she can't bear to be the one to extract it herself, to revisit every other doubt she'd had in the wake of the darkling's betrayal (had any of it been real? how long had he intended to deceive her? what else had he been hiding? would he have ever —)
she falters into a pause, pockmarked by pensiveness. then: )
You don't have to give me everything just because I ask for it.
[Despite her resolution, the hesitation has Alia -- reaching out, silently, her consciousness feeling in the maze of thoughts and minds and souls for the one that is Alina's. She's been careful, hasn't delved too deeply, hasn't dug her greedy, grasping fingers into the other girl's thoughts, despite her overwhelming longing to. She wants to be Alina's friend. She wants to crawl into Alina's marrow and stay there. She wants to cut off her own hands so they don't bring death and destruction to this oasis of a girl, the way everything else Alia touches dies and destroys.
So: her thoughts, her awareness, brushed like the wing of a butterfly on a planet Alia's never seen. She flutters like sunwarmed shallows at Alina's presence, soft, careful, I am here, I am here, hoping that the gentle connection tells what the stark words cannot full convey, even as she says them:]
We give ourselves because we choose to, Alina. It isn't a "have to". It's a "want to".
That's why it matters. Because it isn't compelled. Because you would never force Paul or I to give more than we wish. Because you are
[The words stop, the thrum of Alia's mind taking over: bright warm sharp brilliant Alina laughing Alina smiling Alina wrapped in sheets Alina combing dark hair dark eyes soft mouth soft hands touching holding caressing slapping embracing, Alina, Alina and Alina.]
cw: ptsd, past references to violation of bodily autonomy 😔
( on skittish instinct, alina recoils. she feels stupid for it, in the aftermath, like a child leaping from imaginary shadows. alia's presence is no more intrusive than a sighing breeze on a balmy summer, a bed-warm kiss against alina's temple, a whisper of silk on sore skin. everything good and gentle. everything the darkling hadn't been when he had latched the collar to her throat, warped his fingers around the threads of power inside of her and pulled, leading it around on his restrictive leash. an invader in the home of her body. a violator of the one thing alina had ever truly believed was her own.
she can still feel him there, can still sense his shadows writhing in the pit of her, a wriggling parasite she hasn't been able to eject. a panicky swallow turns her throat bleached-bone-dry as she measures her breath, tries to soften it from choppy exhales. she doesn't gauge the sharp pain in her palms until her fingers flex, running over the crescent grooves her nails have etched into the skin. it sits at dizzying odds with the feedback loop from alia's brain, all sunbeam-bright flashes of worship — blinding, baffling. nothing so near to how alina sees herself, infinitely broken and greedy and afraid.
the result: a swimming vertigo that makes her have to grip the edge of her bed to steady herself. by the time her heart has settled back into a lull, her vision has returned clear — mostly, except for the little specks of white-glitter that dance on the backs of her eyelids when she blinks.
she waits a moment longer, until she's certain it doesn't sound accusatory when she asks, careful: ) Was that you?
( it can't be her own doing. she'd know, if she and alia were tethered by the same inexplicable tether that binds her to the darkling like a second heartbeat, an organ in her chest. wouldn't she? )
[It wouldn't have stopped Alia, on Arrakis. She's pried her thoughts into dozens -- perhaps hundreds -- of minds before, first Jessica's with the heedless, reckless insensitivity of a child, insistent and demanding, her voice yet unheard from within her mother's body. Then Paul's, once Alia was out in the heated spiced air of Arrakis, grabbing at his consciousness and his hands and the leg of his stillsuit in equal measure. Then -- others in the Sisterhood, who all recoiled in horror, whispered Abomination, unnerved by Alia's uncanny awareness, her knowing wrapped in innocence, her ageless, eternal mind beneath tousled golden hair.
Later, those who fell to her sainted blade, hordes of Harkonnen, scores of Sardaukar. Rebels and apostates, enemies to Muad'Dib, their last thoughts like cracking bone, like spurting blood. Alia devoured each one, each last flickering sparks of their mind, and fed their moisture to Arrakis's hungry sands. She was relentless, merciless, brutal, she wrenched their minds apart and felt them die from inside out. She does not flinch.
But here -- she does. She tastes the dryness, the fear in Alina, the knotted presence of something (someone, someone? someone) beneath her sunkissed thoughts, and the way everything in her shudders. Alia's chest goes hot, sick, horrified, and she wrenches her mind back before she finds that Other, that Unknown and tears it to shreds, wrenches it out of Alina's consciousness with her teeth. The urge to do so thrums in her chest, in the pit of her stomach, and she stands, barefoot, nightgowned and paces to the door before she can even inhale.
The hum of her device, her phone, pulls her back. The question from Alina, the bitter aftertaste of Alia's held breath. She replies, immediate:] Yes.
Sorry. [Unfamiliar, an apology for what she is, what she can do. Alia feels like a child, like she's crushed something, hurt it in her careless thoughtlessness, and she kneels in the sand, on the carpet, roughs her palms on it's plush softness and repeats:] I'm sorry, Alina.
( it's alright, she could say, only — it isn't. she doesn't know what alia might have unwittingly seen, and sifting through the endless possibilities makes her entire nervous system want to revolt in violent upheaval. none of it is pretty. all of it is alina starkov. too imperfect, too undeserving of alia's comparisons to summer-day smiles and morning sunrises — simple, beautiful things that have yet to be ruined. everything she's trying to pretend to be, here. everything alia and paul wrongly believe she is.
this morning's eggs feel runny in her stomach, curdling into a sour sickness that cramps her stomach. she smooths a hand over the plane of her stomach, ignoring the acidic burn in her esophagus when she swallows. )
You didn't mean anything by it.
( it deliberately doesn't leave room for any questioning; she has to bring herself to believe that, too. alia isn't the darkling, searching for the hinges on alina's mind, her body, her soul — any opening he might slither through, taking up permanent residency inside of her. she's just a girl, spouting off hasty apologies that remind alina of innocent children: i didn't mean to, as a butterfly's wings tear in their hands, a petal crushed underfoot by a clumsy step. she's just — alia. not the monster that's made himself the starring role in every night terror-turned-vision she's suffered.
because the truth of it is this: no monster has ever apologized for treading on the garden-bed of alina's mind. no one has ever laid out their remorse like an offering. they've only ever demanded bits and pieces of her, unapologetic, entitled, and excused it as in her best interests. called it worship, called it helping her.
she sucks a breath in, out. the hand at her stomach clenches around the lace she bunches up between her fingertips. )
Warn me the next time you do something like that. I wasn't prepared to have anyone in my head.
Edited 2024-07-20 03:39 (UTC)
cw: lack of bodily/mental autonomy, themes of violation, uno reverse card
[Still on her knees, Alia curls her free hand into the carpet, remembering -- the horror of that moment, her unformed, unprepared, unfinished mind suddenly flooded with Others, with thousands of voices, against nature, against the proper time, aging her soul from inside out before she'd ever left her mother's body, before she'd even taken a breath to scream. She can hear them now -- no, only echoes, only ghosts, severed threads, a universe out of time and space. She thinks about the invasion, and the horror and the agony and the pain, and she reads: I wasn't prepared to have anyone in my head.
Suggesting: it has happened before. Suggesting: that whisper of something in Alina's mind is a relic, an echo, scar tissue from someone wrenching their way in, tearing and ripping and violating and--]
can i come see you
[Quick, already out in the hall, already on her way because she has to, she has to see Alina with her own eyes, has to make sure there's no spice in her veins, no blue in her eyes, no millennia of horrors invading her mind. And she won't ask, she will not, she will hold her wicked, cruel tongue and she will wonder and she will feel the bile in her throat and she will tear this damned house apart with her hands and her teeth if anything like that comes close to Alina ever, ever, ever again.]
cw: themes of violation continued, references to grooming, self-victim blaming
( it should be a playful tease between girls, no more than harmless pigtail pulling. she means it to be, too — like it's another routine day in which she's resigned to alia slipping kitten paws beneath alina's door and scratching until she gains entrance, purring happily when she's allowed to nestle at the plush foot of the bed. a force of nature in her own right, but one that leaves prettily wrapped bows around packages of pastries behind — not new stains on the walls of alina's mind, sticky fingers stuck into the most precious parts of her insides.
what it becomes, in reality: alina's resignation to all of her shortcomings. drawing blood from herself not in penance for a past mistake, but punishment for her greatest mistake — a mistake she continues to make. she hadn't been strong enough to stop the darkling. hadn't been shrewd enough, or crafty enough, or — anything other than a rabbit willingly fitting its skull between a wolf's teeth, just to feel the warmth of its breath, just to feel special and known. she wouldn't be equipped to stop alia, either, if she sunk her teeth down into the marrow of alina's mind to feel it snap.
the worst part of it all, maybe, is knowing she would still want her, anyway. would still crave the way her bones shatter in her mouth, like — she can't trust love, now, if someone's canines aren't in her skin. if it doesn't hurt. if she doesn't pay for it in blood.
she swipes angrily beneath her eyes, pacing to her feet. the clingy tears on her eyelashes doesn't feel fair. water alia and paul would call precious, wasted on the memory of a man who would bleed her body of moisture on arrakis, if it meant surviving. she hates herself for that, too. )
I'm in my room.
( but you already knew that, she bites back on saying, and steps into the suite's bathroom. splashes cold water onto her splotchy face and lets the evidence of her weakness swirl down the drain, alina starkov's tears hidden away in bathroom-sink porcelain. )
[And Alia would -- she has before, she will again, she dug her fingers and her teeth into Hayt's artificially-grown heart and made him her own (inasmuch as she could, because he was always Paul's, always his Duke's first, before Alia was more than a spark of potential betwixt Leto and Jessica), she does not know how to love without a knife in her hand, without her teeth in a throat. To hold back is unfamiliar, it's the throb of a bruise on her pale cheek, it's the hollow ache she carries from Alina's panic as if it were her own, but -- it is also the laughter at the lakeside, braided curls and pink mouth and warm eyes. The lakeside wins, masters the streak of wrong that runs deep through Alia, that hems her in, makes and undoes her. Alina by the water in her heart's mind won't let her lose control.
She's in the hall, thoughts pulsing with each footstep towards the shared rooms she knows like true north. There isn't another message, her device left in a pocket of her robe, the fabric billowing around her (like Jessica's on Arrakis, in the first rush of spice-laden air, following her Leto, her love into oblivion, why would Alia remember that now, here?) until she's at the door.
The knock is almost soft, hesitant, knuckles rapping gently. She knows Alina is there, feels her presence even if she doesn't reach out and into her mind again -- a warm, steady flame, the glow of an ember, flaring and stilling, again and again. Still, she asks, in a soft voice, Alia-the-girl, not Alia-the-knife:] Are you there? It's me.
( she tenses at the first tapping echo, expected as it is. it's stupid, really, because she knows what it represents: alia's attempt to make herself smaller, softer, unthreatening. a patient wait for an invitation into her bedroom to atone for carelessly ransacking the borders of alina's mind. alina, spitefully, almost resents it — almost wishes alia would breeze through like an autumn wind, stirring through the room with the air of a woman who believes everything she touches is her rightful domain. at least then alina could pretend away the rupture inside of her. at least then she could fall into the illusion that this is normal, just-alina and just-alia, not — the sun summoner, and the reminder of the man that had obscured her in his shadow. at least then she might be allowed the mercy of forgetting.
punishingly, she scrubs a washcloth over her cheeks, mopping up the last rivers of sinkwater-tears, and tosses it carelessly aside. there's nothing mousey and skittering in alina's strides toward the door — trying to prove to herself and to alia, in equal measure, that she isn't opening her private sanctuary to welcome in the harbinger of its destruction. that she isn't afraid of a wolf at her side, whether its claws are sharp or sheathed. that she's not some scared little girl anymore, cowering at the first sign of darkness.
it doesn't completely work. she can't fully meet alia's eyes for longer than a moment when she opens the door and steps aside. steps away, and back into the room's homey warmth, scattered candles burnishing the room with light, face turned away to keep it from shining on the weary weakness crowding alina's expression. )
I'm fine. ( she has to inject it with something firmer — not quite steel, not quite porcelain — to make it sound even mildly convincing. i'll always be fine. i've always been fine. i have to be fine, because it's too dangerous to consider a world where the opposite is true, where she's just a coward sinking into a void. her arms hug tighter around her midsection, folding herself into a reassuring embrace. ) You didn't have to come all this way to see that for yourself.
Don’t. [It comes out too harsh, too sharp, and Alia’s pale cheeks color a deeper pink as she steps inside, barefoot and bare-legged, her nightgown pale and clinging, a slip of fabric, a slip of a girl. She’s grown accustomed to the sweaters and skirts of this place, to her hair pulled up in a high ponytail, curls tumbling loose as she tosses her head, careless and bright and cruel. But her hair is tangled, messy, snarls of gold on her shoulders, and she hugs herself tight as if cold.]
I did. I did have to. I had to – [Alia stops, just inside the door, stomach tight, boiling with panic, thinking a thousand shattered thoughts – the way Jessica would not meet her eyes, once her abomination daughter was too old, too impulsive to be controlled, the hum of her ship as she left Arrakis, as she fled her children and the fate she’d given them, the empty halls of echoing stone in Arrakeen, as Paul sought solace in the desert, as Irulan paced and glared and turned to stone, as Chani filled with the twins that would murder her. Blood on the sand, and a blinded messiah in the dunes.
She doesn’t realize she’s shaking, doesn’t realize how much the thought of driving Alina away would hurt until it’s knocking at her door. Loss is a weakness, fear is a weapon, but what are they when you bring them on yourself? What is Alia if she isn’t a knife? A girl with no shoes, stepping closer, reaching out, hands soft and unsure against Alina’s crossed arms, a girl sinking to her knees and looking upwards, eyes bright, throat tight.] Please look at me, Alina. Please.
( a muscle in her jaw tics, tenses. the point of her chin goes wobbly like a crumbling floorboard, trying to support the weight of emotions housed inside of her — all these uninvited thoughts that make the hard lines in expression collapse dramatically, a foundation giving way. it's always been like this, since keramzin — locking her outbursts away until it's too much, until she can't barricade it behind carefully built walls and guarded doors. until something vital inside of her seems to outwardly break, leaving nothing but a messy spill for everyone to see.
a thousand ugly contortions distort her face as she fights to keep it at bay, the way she always has. don't let anyone see you cry. don't show weakness, even when you feel it. especially when you feel it. if little orphan girls aren't allowed to show weakness, what excuse do future queens and ruinous saints have? it's the kind of anguished show of emotion she knows the darkling would weaponize, in her shoes. the kind of humanity nikolai would strategize to show for sympathy. for alina, it's just —
raw, pathetic, like viscera left on the floor for someone to step in. nothing she wants alia — wants anyone — to drag their feet through, tracking around evidence that there is something fundamentally broken inside of alina starkov. her face goes splotchy, the tip of her nose ruddy. her arms in alia's hold shake like her bones are coming apart, a seam splitting. she chokes on a wet lump in her throat, staring blankly ahead at the wall, like she's addressing unseen ghosts — not the warm cradle of girl knelt in front of her, offering supplication alina fears reaching for. )
I don't want to. ( it bleats out of her, small, barely audible, feeling no larger than a child in the middle of a tantrum, kicking their feet over a chore. she jerks an arm out of alia's grip to wipe viciously at her leaky eyes, moisture splashing hotly against the back of her hand as she blinks. she forces herself to meet alia's eyes, despite it — despite the blur in her vision, only making out a haloed shine of curls. ) I don't want to do this. I don't want to talk about any of it.
Then don’t. [Alia says it immediately, lets Alina jerk away, lets her weep and shiver and fight with things that a girl from Arrakis, a girl from another world can’t even begin to fathom. She could, she could dig her fingers in and pry it free from the tangled web of Alina’s unknowable thoughts, could pull each thread free like sinew from a shredded throat, stretching stretching snapping. She could Know, and within her there’s a hissing, sneaking, snaking voice that demands that she does, that she invade Alina’s mind once more and pull her apart like a puzzle that defies explanation. The Other Memory whispers what an advantage it would be, to know Paul’s favored companion, to guide him back to the path with secrets Alina hasn’t disclosed yet, to manipulate them both like puppets on strings.
But Alina stands there, eyes red, nose running, tears on her cheeks, and Alia wishes wishes wishes she could tear the hissing voices out of her own mind instead, lay them at the other girl’s feet, like a half-wild cat leaving birds and mice on a doorstep, slashing open their bellies to reveal their gleaming viscera. Alia would burn it out if she could, if she were able, if she knew how, because nothing in the sand-choked, deadly desert world she knows is worthy of being here, in Alina’s room, witnessing her tears. Including Alia herself. Nothing but Paul.
She stays, though, both hands curling around the one left to press between callused palms, staying on her knees, looking upwards so earnestly her neck aches, her eyes water.] You don’t need to say anything. You don’t need to ever mention it again. It’s yours, and I won’t – I’ll never, never touch it again, Alina. Never. I promise. I promise you.
[She breathes in, shuddery, moves closer on her knees, the carpet rough against the blushing skin of her shins.] But don’t look away from me like you can’t bear the sight of me. Like I’m…some monster. Not you too, Alina.
( 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.
[You're Alia, as if that is so different than being a monster. As if there is any great change between the shadows that lick like fire at the corners of Alina’s mind and the girl kneeling before her, knees scuffed by the carpet, eyes red with tears she doesn't know how to weep. And Alia should welcome it, should slip the mantle of abomination onto her slender shoulders, let its weight etch into her bones, her sinew, let it make her into the image of something untouchable, something fierce and ferocious and empty inside, save for the holy fire of a war, a messiah, a man who cannot be Mahdi and brother both. Paul has no choice like Alia has no choice like – Alina has no choice.
But she chooses, still. She touches Alia's hair, fingers trembling in the curl of it, and she stares until her dark, bright doe eyes are as wet as Alia's and she chooses to stand and she chooses to speak and the words are no declaration of love or hope or light. They are as dark as the snarl of grief and fear and bitterness beneath Alia's breast, knotted around what could've been her heart, were she just a girl, just a daughter of the desert with blood in her veins instead of scourging fire.
And Alia chooses to, with her teeth in her lip and her eyes closing against her tears, turn her face into Alina’s hand and nuzzle the palm.] Then don't. [Soft, a breath, a press of bitten-raw lips to the heart of that hand.] Don't trust me, don't tell me, don't give me any more than what you already have, and I will dwell within it as long as you allow it, just-Alina. Be a girl or a knife or just a warmth in my bed and I will love you and I will follow you and I will fall to my knees before you still.
[Rocking back, looking up, the long pale line of her throat working on a swallow, Alia tosses back her hair and bares her teeth on a sob of a laugh.] Let me be a hound at the hearth of you, Alina, and it will be more than a thousand worlds could've offered. I don't ask you for more than that.
I won't. I can't swear anything else, but I can swear that, with all the blood and water in me
It's not fair. It's not fair that I can't give those things to you. It's not fair that you won't ask for them.
( it isn't fair that alia would offer so much and yet demand so little. maybe it should be liberating — love cut loose of its strings, of its expectations. instead, it's terrifying to consider, like — staring into the eyes of a myth she's convinced herself wasn't true. unconditional love, the ultimate fiction. as if alina could not disappoint her, could not fail her, the way she has so many others. as if there is nothing alia needs from her in exchange to be convinced to stay, to be convinced to see her as worthy.
it's not true, she wants to say, compelled to rip open the seams of a lie. look inside to prove it's an empty, hollow thing, before she dares to hope it's possible. they're too alike for alia to mean it — greedy girls who know what it means to be hungry, who know what it means to fear yourself, who know what it means to be loved for all the wrong reasons. the proof of that greed: alina's selfish refusal to tell alia that she deserves more than what she's asking for, bartering her loyalty just to be fed a crumb.
alina's throat cinches, a swallow bobbing around a wet lump in her throat. her fingers fall, return to scour the tears from her briny cheeks. )
You can't tell anyone. ( a quick, cracking burst. she doesn't have to say it, she thinks, for alia to know who she means. that's rawboned selfishness, too — like asking a heart not to communicate with the blood it pumps. ) Please. I don't want ...
( to be looked at as moth-eaten and worn. a glass thrown away and broken. alia might have spied the cracks and fissures she had been hiding, but — she can still preserve the image of alina starkov paul has in his mind. can still try her best to be perfect for him. she withers into herself again, without any better use for her arms, cradling her midsection for comfort. her hands fiddle, grasping the frills of her nightclothes between her fingers. )
I like the version of myself I've built here. With him. ( softer: ) With you. Whoever just-Alina is, I'm not ready to say goodbye to her.
[It isn’t fair, not at all, because Alia is lying, is offering what she cannot with every tearful inhale, is giving herself when she has never belonged to herself. She is a knife in the shape of a woman, and she will die buried beneath the ribs of Paul’s enemies, and she will live every moment until then serving the vision of Muad’Dib. Anything else is impossible, is a desert mirage born of thirst and desperation and sand in her eyes and spice in her mouth, a melange of lies that will crumble back to the dunes once it’s placed in the light. Alia cannot offer Alina anything, ever, and she knows it and she hates it and she does it anyway.
Because it’s also not fair that Alina is crying, that there are tears on her face like the tears Alia herself had never wept as an infant, slipping free of her mother quiet and solemn and fully self-possessed, never a child, never a girl, always and ever Reverend Mother and Bene Gesserit and Saint. She rises, knees wobbly, face reddened, hair loose and golden as she leans down, rests her forehead to Alina’s and reaches shaky hands to wipe away her tears.]
I won’t tell. [Soft, sweet, palms flat along the smooth shape of freckled cheekbones, settling to cradle a face that no design of mothers past could’ve created. There are stars in Alina’s tearful, reddened eyes, ones that drip over her lush lashes, and Alia ducks to kiss them, one two three, because to waste moisture is unthinkable. She breathes in the smell of sweat and sleep and girl, and her arms slip around Alina, like a child, reckless and bold and demanding, embracing without ever accepting the possibility of rejection.] Be just-Alina, and let me be just-Alia and I won’t tell anyone otherwise.
[Another lie, another promise she cannot keep, one hand petting over the tangle of Alina’s hair and kissing her eyes and her nose and whispering:] Please, don’t cry, Alina. I won’t tell anyone.
( alina's resistance crumbles in an instant, bones gone melty and buttery in alia's grip. weak, in a way she hasn't been allowed to be, knowing what it would mean for her survival in ravka — drawing attention the way a wounded deer draws hungry, exploitative glances. sagging forward, she hides her vulnerability away in the cave of alia's throat, as though the burden of keeping herself upright is too much weight to carry.
that, too, feels selfish. forcing alia to steady her, stealing whatever comfort she can while she clings to the gauzy fabric of alia's night dress like a child clutching at a soft blanket. like alia is the only safe thing she knows, and not another monster that could borrow into alina's skull, a worm devouring an apple core. pretending, maybe, that it pains her to wriggle through alina's insides.
it's unfair to even think it when alia looks so brittle, worn down by the ripple of pain she had caused, as if she lived the agony of alina's memories herself. still, the thought sends her into a fresh shudder, all spasming breaths like she's choking on seawater, airways clogged by the salty moisture of her own tears. for some time, it's the only evidence of alina's outburst at all, condemning herself to suffering quietly — until she untangles herself from alia's grip, to find the strap of her nightgown is soaked with tears and snot. alina starkov's unfortunate used tissue.
sheepishly, alina stares at the damp patch, too ashamed to let her eyes settle on alia's face. )
Sorry. ( the soft rasp almost seems too loud in the room, wedging itself into the silence. ) You can borrow one of mine.
( exhausted, she drags herself to the drawers in a corner. there's no point in feigning casualness now, after alia has seen her at her most fragile — but alina still tries, still clears her dry throat, as she plucks a cloud-soft nightgown of blue free. )
It's getting late. I think it's time I slept for the next century or so. ( i don't want to be alone. stay. ) But you could stay, if you wanted.
[Perhaps it means more because it’s so strange – Alina’s tears, Alia’s comfort, both zealously (selfishly) guarded in the worlds they come from. A knife cannot embrace, cannot stroke through the tangles of dark hair, cannot banish the monsters with a tuneless, near-inaudible hum of old, old songs. And, of course there are unknown reasons that Alina does not let her tears fall, and Alia can feel them in the room alongside her own ghosts, side by side, like sentinels, like soldiers in formation. Waiting and watching.
Let them. Let them be silent and dead and gone, banished with the steady dampening of her shoulder, with the shiver of Alina in her arms, a raw, tender, vulnerable thing that few have ever seen. Alia is selfish to her core, because she craves that, as painful and wrenching as each sob is, because they are given to her, only to her, all the agony that Alina sees as ugly like handfuls of gems, like water in the desert, weighty teardrops spilled onto outstretched, hungry hands.
When Alina pulls away, Alia is dry-eyed, but oddly sedate, like the nearness, the embrace has sated something in her she didn’t know was starving. The glance at her shoulder is echoed, some words about the gift of moisture given so freely building in her throat, then dying away at the rustle of blue fabric as it’s drawn out of the drawer. Alia customarily avoids color, sticks to white and grey and beige, the colors of sand and bones and sunbleached skies.
Blue is for water, for warm sunlight and cool ponds, for life and growing things. Without her conscious consent, Alia reaches out, touches the soft hem of the nightgown, smiles.] I’d like to stay. [Soft, to the fabric first, pooling cornflower-blue in Alina’s hands, rubbed gently between two fingertips. Then, eyes nearly the same shade, lifting up, hopeful and a touch shy.] I want to stay. With you. Can I?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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[It comes out light, like the potential disapproval of Jessica doesn't ache at the back of Alia's throat with every breath. Would she approve of this, of the dalliances of her children, of their attachment to a girl from another world? No, because the purpose, the goal, the Holy War lies languishing in favor of Alia's gifts beneath Alina's bed.
Let her disapprove. She is only here in the echoes Alia carries in her mind, her unasked-for burden. Let Alia ease that lifelong torment as she pleases, with stolen kisses and stolen cake.
The mention of divinity sparks a thought, a curiosity -- are they so alike, in the end? Had the echo of something within Alina been so close to home? The thought is an amusing one, but Alina deflects it with practiced ease, and Alia...does not press it. For the first time in her life, she lets it lie. Let Alina speak it in her own time. Alia finds she doesn't want to push.
Instead:] Because I like you.
Because I've forgotten how to be just another girl, and you make me think I could be.
And because Paul is funny when he's trying to beat me at something.
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titles like friend, titles like beloved. titles that give her the privilege of teasing, through the sudden starburst of warmth in her chest: )
Wait. What do you mean "trying" to beat you?
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I'm better at giving gifts. Always have been. He's better at most things, but I'm catching up. Not that he needs much motivation to spoil you, though.
I like seeing him like this. The Paul I know is so tired, so weighed down by everything he is. He's himself, here. I'm grateful to you for that, too, Alina.
You brought me my brother back.
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maybe it's a little cowardly, in the end, no better than sticking her head into the sand, in case of the truth of what he is — what alina is — violently shifts the landscape of what they're becoming. she hides in it, anyway, tucked away in her little claimed corner of normalcy. )
It doesn't seem fair to take all the credit for it. He's let me exist as just Alina, so long as he's just Paul.
I know a little of what it's like to live under the weight of someone else's expectations.
It costs a person something when the world around you asks you to be everything to them.
Well, almost everything. The one thing they never ask you to be is yourself.
I won't ask you to be anyone else. You could be just Alia, if you want to be.
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The only friends Alia has had were long-dead Reverend Mothers, were hardened Fedaykin who taught her to bleed life into the hungry sands of Arrakis, were her sad-eyed, soul-weary brother. The only care she had was for this last, Paul before anyone, Paul above the entire universe, a billion trillion lives sacrificed on the altar of the Kwisatch Haderach.
But the fact of it: she leaves pastries and sweets beneath Alina's bed. She imagines her sucking sugar from her fingers, smiling with cake crumbs on her cheek, bright eyes, soft lips, tangled curls. Alia imagines the sacrifices she would make, on this new altar building between her ribs.]
It seems to be a very mutually beneficial arrangement.
I won't say too much, it's Paul's to tell, but you're very clever, Alina. And you have seen him, spoken to him.
I think anyone could feel he's special. [Sibling bias, ingrained worship, loyalty that predates Alia's bones themselves, but she means it.]
That isn't a promise I've ever been made. But I [A pause, long, lingering.]
I want that.
I've wanted it for a long time.
Eat your cake before it gets stale.
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You're bossy.
( it's short-lived. alina can taste citrus turn to ash on her tongue, for just a flickering moment, before she forces herself to swallow it down. special, alia says, and it only needles at the questions she's stored away beneath floorboards of whatever she and paul are building to collect dust. out of sight, out of mind. because it feels like a warning, now, though she's uncertain if alia is beckoning her to look closer, or — if it's an entreaty: treat him delicately. he has already been mishandled. )
He is special. He's made himself special to me.
I don't need to know the rest for that to be true.
( the rest doesn't matter, she could say. it isn't strictly honest. the darkling has taught her to fear what skeletons hide in a closet, what truths are swept beneath a rug. it's just — she can't imagine paul's is an ugly, grotesque match for the secrets aleksander keeps.
she types. thinks better of it. reconsiders, again. finally: ) You speak about Paul like you aren't important.
( or — not as equally important.. alina frowns. ) But I'd like to know you, too. If you'll let me.
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I am bossy, but I am right as well. Mostly.
[In truth, Alia thinks also of other ways to please and service this sharp, sweet girl, the ways a saint's own penitents would seek to delight her. The ways Jessica most disapproved of, protective of her daughter's womb as the divine thing it was. Would she begrudge this enchantment, or would it not register since there was no risk of Alina befouling the preciously-guarded bloodline? Who knows.]
He would tell you, if you asked.
I think it means something that you haven't, yet.
[Paul would not begrudge Alina anything -- Alia is conscious of that already, knowing her brother as she does, how fervent and heated he burns for those he cares for. But even if she were to ask for all the tangled threads that weave the tapestry of Muad'Dib, the fact would remain: she had not demanding it from the outset.
At this last, Alia pauses. She nearly says I'm not, not in comparison, though it is and isn't true at once. There is the divine and there is the abomination. There is Paul, and there are all others. But, finally:] I'd let you, Alina.
If you wished it.
I don't think I could refuse you anything.
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she exhales, a leaf-shaky breath. )
I don't want to have to ask him.
Paul will tell me in time. I have to believe that.
( it's stupid, she knows, like — leaping blindly into a chasm, unsure of how far it drops, and expecting to land without scrapes and broken bones. still, she can't bear to be the one to extract it herself, to revisit every other doubt she'd had in the wake of the darkling's betrayal (had any of it been real? how long had he intended to deceive her? what else had he been hiding? would he have ever —)
she falters into a pause, pockmarked by pensiveness. then: )
You don't have to give me everything just because I ask for it.
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So: her thoughts, her awareness, brushed like the wing of a butterfly on a planet Alia's never seen. She flutters like sunwarmed shallows at Alina's presence, soft, careful, I am here, I am here, hoping that the gentle connection tells what the stark words cannot full convey, even as she says them:]
We give ourselves because we choose to, Alina.
It isn't a "have to". It's a "want to".
That's why it matters. Because it isn't compelled. Because you would never force Paul or I to give more than we wish. Because you are
[The words stop, the thrum of Alia's mind taking over: bright warm sharp brilliant Alina laughing Alina smiling Alina wrapped in sheets Alina combing dark hair dark eyes soft mouth soft hands touching holding caressing slapping embracing, Alina, Alina and Alina.]
cw: ptsd, past references to violation of bodily autonomy 😔
she can still feel him there, can still sense his shadows writhing in the pit of her, a wriggling parasite she hasn't been able to eject. a panicky swallow turns her throat bleached-bone-dry as she measures her breath, tries to soften it from choppy exhales. she doesn't gauge the sharp pain in her palms until her fingers flex, running over the crescent grooves her nails have etched into the skin. it sits at dizzying odds with the feedback loop from alia's brain, all sunbeam-bright flashes of worship — blinding, baffling. nothing so near to how alina sees herself, infinitely broken and greedy and afraid.
the result: a swimming vertigo that makes her have to grip the edge of her bed to steady herself. by the time her heart has settled back into a lull, her vision has returned clear — mostly, except for the little specks of white-glitter that dance on the backs of her eyelids when she blinks.
she waits a moment longer, until she's certain it doesn't sound accusatory when she asks, careful: ) Was that you?
( it can't be her own doing. she'd know, if she and alia were tethered by the same inexplicable tether that binds her to the darkling like a second heartbeat, an organ in her chest. wouldn't she? )
what if i Cry
Later, those who fell to her sainted blade, hordes of Harkonnen, scores of Sardaukar. Rebels and apostates, enemies to Muad'Dib, their last thoughts like cracking bone, like spurting blood. Alia devoured each one, each last flickering sparks of their mind, and fed their moisture to Arrakis's hungry sands. She was relentless, merciless, brutal, she wrenched their minds apart and felt them die from inside out. She does not flinch.
But here -- she does. She tastes the dryness, the fear in Alina, the knotted presence of something (someone, someone? someone) beneath her sunkissed thoughts, and the way everything in her shudders. Alia's chest goes hot, sick, horrified, and she wrenches her mind back before she finds that Other, that Unknown and tears it to shreds, wrenches it out of Alina's consciousness with her teeth. The urge to do so thrums in her chest, in the pit of her stomach, and she stands, barefoot, nightgowned and paces to the door before she can even inhale.
The hum of her device, her phone, pulls her back. The question from Alina, the bitter aftertaste of Alia's held breath. She replies, immediate:] Yes.
Sorry. [Unfamiliar, an apology for what she is, what she can do. Alia feels like a child, like she's crushed something, hurt it in her careless thoughtlessness, and she kneels in the sand, on the carpet, roughs her palms on it's plush softness and repeats:] I'm sorry, Alina.
i'll lay on the floor w you
this morning's eggs feel runny in her stomach, curdling into a sour sickness that cramps her stomach. she smooths a hand over the plane of her stomach, ignoring the acidic burn in her esophagus when she swallows. )
You didn't mean anything by it.
( it deliberately doesn't leave room for any questioning; she has to bring herself to believe that, too. alia isn't the darkling, searching for the hinges on alina's mind, her body, her soul — any opening he might slither through, taking up permanent residency inside of her. she's just a girl, spouting off hasty apologies that remind alina of innocent children: i didn't mean to, as a butterfly's wings tear in their hands, a petal crushed underfoot by a clumsy step. she's just — alia. not the monster that's made himself the starring role in every night terror-turned-vision she's suffered.
because the truth of it is this: no monster has ever apologized for treading on the garden-bed of alina's mind. no one has ever laid out their remorse like an offering. they've only ever demanded bits and pieces of her, unapologetic, entitled, and excused it as in her best interests. called it worship, called it helping her.
she sucks a breath in, out. the hand at her stomach clenches around the lace she bunches up between her fingertips. )
Warn me the next time you do something like that. I wasn't prepared to have anyone in my head.
cw: lack of bodily/mental autonomy, themes of violation, uno reverse card
Suggesting: it has happened before. Suggesting: that whisper of something in Alina's mind is a relic, an echo, scar tissue from someone wrenching their way in, tearing and ripping and violating and--]
can i come see you
[Quick, already out in the hall, already on her way because she has to, she has to see Alina with her own eyes, has to make sure there's no spice in her veins, no blue in her eyes, no millennia of horrors invading her mind. And she won't ask, she will not, she will hold her wicked, cruel tongue and she will wonder and she will feel the bile in her throat and she will tear this damned house apart with her hands and her teeth if anything like that comes close to Alina ever, ever, ever again.]
cw: themes of violation continued, references to grooming, self-victim blaming
( it should be a playful tease between girls, no more than harmless pigtail pulling. she means it to be, too — like it's another routine day in which she's resigned to alia slipping kitten paws beneath alina's door and scratching until she gains entrance, purring happily when she's allowed to nestle at the plush foot of the bed. a force of nature in her own right, but one that leaves prettily wrapped bows around packages of pastries behind — not new stains on the walls of alina's mind, sticky fingers stuck into the most precious parts of her insides.
what it becomes, in reality: alina's resignation to all of her shortcomings. drawing blood from herself not in penance for a past mistake, but punishment for her greatest mistake — a mistake she continues to make. she hadn't been strong enough to stop the darkling. hadn't been shrewd enough, or crafty enough, or — anything other than a rabbit willingly fitting its skull between a wolf's teeth, just to feel the warmth of its breath, just to feel special and known. she wouldn't be equipped to stop alia, either, if she sunk her teeth down into the marrow of alina's mind to feel it snap.
the worst part of it all, maybe, is knowing she would still want her, anyway. would still crave the way her bones shatter in her mouth, like — she can't trust love, now, if someone's canines aren't in her skin. if it doesn't hurt. if she doesn't pay for it in blood.
she swipes angrily beneath her eyes, pacing to her feet. the clingy tears on her eyelashes doesn't feel fair. water alia and paul would call precious, wasted on the memory of a man who would bleed her body of moisture on arrakis, if it meant surviving. she hates herself for that, too. )
I'm in my room.
( but you already knew that, she bites back on saying, and steps into the suite's bathroom. splashes cold water onto her splotchy face and lets the evidence of her weakness swirl down the drain, alina starkov's tears hidden away in bathroom-sink porcelain. )
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She's in the hall, thoughts pulsing with each footstep towards the shared rooms she knows like true north. There isn't another message, her device left in a pocket of her robe, the fabric billowing around her (like Jessica's on Arrakis, in the first rush of spice-laden air, following her Leto, her love into oblivion, why would Alia remember that now, here?) until she's at the door.
The knock is almost soft, hesitant, knuckles rapping gently. She knows Alina is there, feels her presence even if she doesn't reach out and into her mind again -- a warm, steady flame, the glow of an ember, flaring and stilling, again and again. Still, she asks, in a soft voice, Alia-the-girl, not Alia-the-knife:] Are you there? It's me.
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punishingly, she scrubs a washcloth over her cheeks, mopping up the last rivers of sinkwater-tears, and tosses it carelessly aside. there's nothing mousey and skittering in alina's strides toward the door — trying to prove to herself and to alia, in equal measure, that she isn't opening her private sanctuary to welcome in the harbinger of its destruction. that she isn't afraid of a wolf at her side, whether its claws are sharp or sheathed. that she's not some scared little girl anymore, cowering at the first sign of darkness.
it doesn't completely work. she can't fully meet alia's eyes for longer than a moment when she opens the door and steps aside. steps away, and back into the room's homey warmth, scattered candles burnishing the room with light, face turned away to keep it from shining on the weary weakness crowding alina's expression. )
I'm fine. ( she has to inject it with something firmer — not quite steel, not quite porcelain — to make it sound even mildly convincing. i'll always be fine. i've always been fine. i have to be fine, because it's too dangerous to consider a world where the opposite is true, where she's just a coward sinking into a void. her arms hug tighter around her midsection, folding herself into a reassuring embrace. ) You didn't have to come all this way to see that for yourself.
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I did. I did have to. I had to – [Alia stops, just inside the door, stomach tight, boiling with panic, thinking a thousand shattered thoughts – the way Jessica would not meet her eyes, once her abomination daughter was too old, too impulsive to be controlled, the hum of her ship as she left Arrakis, as she fled her children and the fate she’d given them, the empty halls of echoing stone in Arrakeen, as Paul sought solace in the desert, as Irulan paced and glared and turned to stone, as Chani filled with the twins that would murder her. Blood on the sand, and a blinded messiah in the dunes.
She doesn’t realize she’s shaking, doesn’t realize how much the thought of driving Alina away would hurt until it’s knocking at her door. Loss is a weakness, fear is a weapon, but what are they when you bring them on yourself? What is Alia if she isn’t a knife? A girl with no shoes, stepping closer, reaching out, hands soft and unsure against Alina’s crossed arms, a girl sinking to her knees and looking upwards, eyes bright, throat tight.] Please look at me, Alina. Please.
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a thousand ugly contortions distort her face as she fights to keep it at bay, the way she always has. don't let anyone see you cry. don't show weakness, even when you feel it. especially when you feel it. if little orphan girls aren't allowed to show weakness, what excuse do future queens and ruinous saints have? it's the kind of anguished show of emotion she knows the darkling would weaponize, in her shoes. the kind of humanity nikolai would strategize to show for sympathy. for alina, it's just —
raw, pathetic, like viscera left on the floor for someone to step in. nothing she wants alia — wants anyone — to drag their feet through, tracking around evidence that there is something fundamentally broken inside of alina starkov. her face goes splotchy, the tip of her nose ruddy. her arms in alia's hold shake like her bones are coming apart, a seam splitting. she chokes on a wet lump in her throat, staring blankly ahead at the wall, like she's addressing unseen ghosts — not the warm cradle of girl knelt in front of her, offering supplication alina fears reaching for. )
I don't want to. ( it bleats out of her, small, barely audible, feeling no larger than a child in the middle of a tantrum, kicking their feet over a chore. she jerks an arm out of alia's grip to wipe viciously at her leaky eyes, moisture splashing hotly against the back of her hand as she blinks. she forces herself to meet alia's eyes, despite it — despite the blur in her vision, only making out a haloed shine of curls. ) I don't want to do this. I don't want to talk about any of it.
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But Alina stands there, eyes red, nose running, tears on her cheeks, and Alia wishes wishes wishes she could tear the hissing voices out of her own mind instead, lay them at the other girl’s feet, like a half-wild cat leaving birds and mice on a doorstep, slashing open their bellies to reveal their gleaming viscera. Alia would burn it out if she could, if she were able, if she knew how, because nothing in the sand-choked, deadly desert world she knows is worthy of being here, in Alina’s room, witnessing her tears. Including Alia herself. Nothing but Paul.
She stays, though, both hands curling around the one left to press between callused palms, staying on her knees, looking upwards so earnestly her neck aches, her eyes water.] You don’t need to say anything. You don’t need to ever mention it again. It’s yours, and I won’t – I’ll never, never touch it again, Alina. Never. I promise. I promise you.
[She breathes in, shuddery, moves closer on her knees, the carpet rough against the blushing skin of her shins.] But don’t look away from me like you can’t bear the sight of me. Like I’m…some monster. Not you too, Alina.
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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.
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But she chooses, still. She touches Alia's hair, fingers trembling in the curl of it, and she stares until her dark, bright doe eyes are as wet as Alia's and she chooses to stand and she chooses to speak and the words are no declaration of love or hope or light. They are as dark as the snarl of grief and fear and bitterness beneath Alia's breast, knotted around what could've been her heart, were she just a girl, just a daughter of the desert with blood in her veins instead of scourging fire.
And Alia chooses to, with her teeth in her lip and her eyes closing against her tears, turn her face into Alina’s hand and nuzzle the palm.] Then don't. [Soft, a breath, a press of bitten-raw lips to the heart of that hand.] Don't trust me, don't tell me, don't give me any more than what you already have, and I will dwell within it as long as you allow it, just-Alina. Be a girl or a knife or just a warmth in my bed and I will love you and I will follow you and I will fall to my knees before you still.
[Rocking back, looking up, the long pale line of her throat working on a swallow, Alia tosses back her hair and bares her teeth on a sob of a laugh.] Let me be a hound at the hearth of you, Alina, and it will be more than a thousand worlds could've offered. I don't ask you for more than that.
I won't. I can't swear anything else, but I can swear that, with all the blood and water in me
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( it isn't fair that alia would offer so much and yet demand so little. maybe it should be liberating — love cut loose of its strings, of its expectations. instead, it's terrifying to consider, like — staring into the eyes of a myth she's convinced herself wasn't true. unconditional love, the ultimate fiction. as if alina could not disappoint her, could not fail her, the way she has so many others. as if there is nothing alia needs from her in exchange to be convinced to stay, to be convinced to see her as worthy.
it's not true, she wants to say, compelled to rip open the seams of a lie. look inside to prove it's an empty, hollow thing, before she dares to hope it's possible. they're too alike for alia to mean it — greedy girls who know what it means to be hungry, who know what it means to fear yourself, who know what it means to be loved for all the wrong reasons. the proof of that greed: alina's selfish refusal to tell alia that she deserves more than what she's asking for, bartering her loyalty just to be fed a crumb.
alina's throat cinches, a swallow bobbing around a wet lump in her throat. her fingers fall, return to scour the tears from her briny cheeks. )
You can't tell anyone. ( a quick, cracking burst. she doesn't have to say it, she thinks, for alia to know who she means. that's rawboned selfishness, too — like asking a heart not to communicate with the blood it pumps. ) Please. I don't want ...
( to be looked at as moth-eaten and worn. a glass thrown away and broken. alia might have spied the cracks and fissures she had been hiding, but — she can still preserve the image of alina starkov paul has in his mind. can still try her best to be perfect for him. she withers into herself again, without any better use for her arms, cradling her midsection for comfort. her hands fiddle, grasping the frills of her nightclothes between her fingers. )
I like the version of myself I've built here. With him. ( softer: ) With you. Whoever just-Alina is, I'm not ready to say goodbye to her.
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Because it’s also not fair that Alina is crying, that there are tears on her face like the tears Alia herself had never wept as an infant, slipping free of her mother quiet and solemn and fully self-possessed, never a child, never a girl, always and ever Reverend Mother and Bene Gesserit and Saint. She rises, knees wobbly, face reddened, hair loose and golden as she leans down, rests her forehead to Alina’s and reaches shaky hands to wipe away her tears.]
I won’t tell. [Soft, sweet, palms flat along the smooth shape of freckled cheekbones, settling to cradle a face that no design of mothers past could’ve created. There are stars in Alina’s tearful, reddened eyes, ones that drip over her lush lashes, and Alia ducks to kiss them, one two three, because to waste moisture is unthinkable. She breathes in the smell of sweat and sleep and girl, and her arms slip around Alina, like a child, reckless and bold and demanding, embracing without ever accepting the possibility of rejection.] Be just-Alina, and let me be just-Alia and I won’t tell anyone otherwise.
[Another lie, another promise she cannot keep, one hand petting over the tangle of Alina’s hair and kissing her eyes and her nose and whispering:] Please, don’t cry, Alina. I won’t tell anyone.
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that, too, feels selfish. forcing alia to steady her, stealing whatever comfort she can while she clings to the gauzy fabric of alia's night dress like a child clutching at a soft blanket. like alia is the only safe thing she knows, and not another monster that could borrow into alina's skull, a worm devouring an apple core. pretending, maybe, that it pains her to wriggle through alina's insides.
it's unfair to even think it when alia looks so brittle, worn down by the ripple of pain she had caused, as if she lived the agony of alina's memories herself. still, the thought sends her into a fresh shudder, all spasming breaths like she's choking on seawater, airways clogged by the salty moisture of her own tears. for some time, it's the only evidence of alina's outburst at all, condemning herself to suffering quietly — until she untangles herself from alia's grip, to find the strap of her nightgown is soaked with tears and snot. alina starkov's unfortunate used tissue.
sheepishly, alina stares at the damp patch, too ashamed to let her eyes settle on alia's face. )
Sorry. ( the soft rasp almost seems too loud in the room, wedging itself into the silence. ) You can borrow one of mine.
( exhausted, she drags herself to the drawers in a corner. there's no point in feigning casualness now, after alia has seen her at her most fragile — but alina still tries, still clears her dry throat, as she plucks a cloud-soft nightgown of blue free. )
It's getting late. I think it's time I slept for the next century or so. ( i don't want to be alone. stay. ) But you could stay, if you wanted.
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Let them. Let them be silent and dead and gone, banished with the steady dampening of her shoulder, with the shiver of Alina in her arms, a raw, tender, vulnerable thing that few have ever seen. Alia is selfish to her core, because she craves that, as painful and wrenching as each sob is, because they are given to her, only to her, all the agony that Alina sees as ugly like handfuls of gems, like water in the desert, weighty teardrops spilled onto outstretched, hungry hands.
When Alina pulls away, Alia is dry-eyed, but oddly sedate, like the nearness, the embrace has sated something in her she didn’t know was starving. The glance at her shoulder is echoed, some words about the gift of moisture given so freely building in her throat, then dying away at the rustle of blue fabric as it’s drawn out of the drawer. Alia customarily avoids color, sticks to white and grey and beige, the colors of sand and bones and sunbleached skies.
Blue is for water, for warm sunlight and cool ponds, for life and growing things. Without her conscious consent, Alia reaches out, touches the soft hem of the nightgown, smiles.] I’d like to stay. [Soft, to the fabric first, pooling cornflower-blue in Alina’s hands, rubbed gently between two fingertips. Then, eyes nearly the same shade, lifting up, hopeful and a touch shy.] I want to stay. With you. Can I?
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