( for how i react to things. she doesn't seek clarification — only thinks of paul's mind detached from his spirit, severed from his heart chambers, firing off thought without first consulting the organ in his chest. a perfect series of logical replies, until they aren't. alina doesn't dare voice what comes to mind: that she prefers the bone-melting scorch of his desert anger than the icy ravkan tundra of his methodical thinking, like he's parsing down the meat of a problem to solve it, a butcher hacking away at the extraneous fat. that makes her the terrible thing in the dark.
his touch isn't one that beckons her to follow; alina is reminded of patted horses, easily spooked, as his fingertips smooth up and down the line of her legs, parted from the silken drape of a rich nightgown. like it isn't her duty to be the source of sunlight, the comforting glimpse of a horizon at the end of a tunnel. a sigh gusts from her, quieter than the rest, as her eyelids flicker shut — a curtain of privacy, playing pretending at being a confessional booth. )
You are my Paul.
( she says it the way saints speak of suffering: with reverence, with certainty. as if it's the only truth that's ever held her up. she forgets how young he is, sometimes, until he says things like that. i just want to be your paul. a boy housed in the divine vessel of a prophet. what a cruel thing it is, to be built for someone else's salvation, and never your own. )
I didn't marry a perfect man. I married you. I've stood through worse than getting cut on a man's rough edges. It's not like — ( her voice pauses, lowers, but doesn't falter. shame blurs the edges, softens the focus. a shake of her head across the pillow. ) It's not like you weren't right. About all of it.
( it's hypnotic, this wall of scorned, angry women — intimidating, even scary, if paul was the type to be scared. no, that's not fair. there's plenty that scares him, and plenty that used to. the bene gesserit may have at one point been on that list. now? he wonders at the spot where his mother could or should be, about where his lines blur with hers, theirs, ours, we. he could stare at the women for hours, memorizing a thousand of them. he has, in the past. but now?
he casts them away, blinking for the first time in a few minutes, head rolling as he falls back into himself. out of the galaxy, off starlight paths, back to the floral line of fairy lights that guide him right back to alina. he turns, hand to her arm and the top of her head, encouraging her to roll on her back. she doesn't have to, if she doesn't want to. regardless, paul bends to kiss her head, scooting back against the headboard.
i didn't marry a perfect man. i married you. maybe the kindest thing paul, the prophetical messiah and destroyer of the known world, has ever been told. )
I think ... it's alright to be angry. ( he loves her hair, the way it feels between his pinched fingertips. like the silk of fresh leaves. like mouse fur. like a secret. ) But it's not alright to be cruel. I don't want to be someone that hurts the people I love.
( one day he will be, he thinks. there is a certain inevitability to his cruelty. but, if he can manage one thing, let it be maintaining the softness between him and alina here tonight — cultivate it, protect it like a soldier. no darkness will seep in here, where alina is light and love and the axis by which his world tilts, singing alina, alina at the center knot of his heart. )
I didn't marry perfection, either. But I love you, my Alina, and I always will.
( 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.
( beside her, paul takes to her in his meticulous, considering way, godly fingertips by way of human-adjacent touches, following the line of her nose to her shapely lips, down her chin, down her throat, between her collar, tapping the center of her chest. almost idly asked, ) Would you like my head?
( she could indeed have it, not because she's a saint, but because paul would give it to her. or maybe in equal halves because she is a saint and paul is the lisan al gaib, and neither one of them have gotten used to the power of getting something without having to earn it first. like alina. she once told him he earns her by being kind to her, soft with her. there were softer actions to take than threatening (see: attempting) to kill her temporary beloved. that's not to say paul has any soft feelings towards spike, but he does have them towards alina, who deserves the best of what he is. and what is he? a billion molecules with a billion faces, all turned towards her, wherever she is. it's ironic that she's the sun summoner, because she is exactly like the sun, all living things turning toward and basked in her revelry.
not that you would know it now, mopey as she is. a not undeserved sentiment, considering how the house has toyed with her as of late. )
You can have it, if you like. If I become irredeemable to you. I'll give you my throat, just above the shoulders. ( this is commented idly, too — like it's obvious the only medicine to alina's loathing is a knife to the throat. too gorey, too unromantic. reverend mothers hiss in his ear, but all he can think about is his head turned into a goblet, alina's mouth against his bones on every swallow. ) I guess some small hurts are inevitable, if you think like that. It's. ( he sighs, stroking at the path of her skin just above her heart. ) It's hard for me to say anything is inevitable. I can see the path, most of the time — inevitabilities are just the choices I've made, the paths I've walked.
The big hurts are the wrong steps. I know before, with the wedding, it wasn't you purposely hurting me. There's little to forgive, because I feel no anger towards you. Just ... ( he moves his hand, cupped under her chin, thumb against her lips. to suck on. ) Longing. Like I want all your attention to be on me, always. And I like being obsessed with you, I like loving you this much. Any ache is worth it.
The point is, I'm sorry. About how I handled your affliction, and about how I spoke to you about Alia, back then. It was a mistake, and you deserve better from me. And you'll get it.
( her mouth furls. by ravkan standards, paul belongs to the same carvings of saints that have defined her. gifted beyond the world's understanding. doomed to death. sold like a handcrafted trinket, false bones sprinkled across market stalls — a toe, a tooth. no part of them unused. no part of them treated as strictly medicinal: a cure for the world's ailing hope.
he can't possibly understand the weight of it, alina wants to say, until she thinks of the crysknife he handles like the fist of god itself — sacrificial blood drawn, in the ivory curve of shai-hulud's spent bones. the gift he would chisel from his skull as if it might bless her with the same strength, as if it's the natural course. his life, meant to defend her; his death, meant to serve her.
a frown furls across alina's mouth, all the same. she thinks of the darkling's skeleton, an imbued amplifier; thinks of the manner his death can only belong to her. thinks of the contract of loneliness it condemns her to, the cruelty of forcing her hand to end his destruction. the only obstruction from the spill of immediate rejection: paul's thumb pacifying her mouth, the instinctual part of her lips to accept him into her body, no matter where he enters. her cunt, her mouth, her mind, her bloodstream. it slips to her lower lip once they part around a breath, saliva-slick on her pink mouth. )
Love born from martyrdom never survives. You know that. Next time you want to offer me a gift, try flowers.
( a flare of sunlight behind her eyes, a glint of something golden and flashing — illuminated with too much emotion. )
You don't owe me, blood. You owed me the truth. ( a snagging at his wrist, loose — like a charm on a bracelet, dangling. a simple inscribed message: i forgive you. simple, easy to give — a mirrored reflection of his apology. ) It wasn't about Alia. Or ... the way you spoke, really. It was about the lies. The hiding. The secrets. Not knowing where I stood with you, or if I mattered. You saying this now — it helps. It's what I wanted from the start.
( a kiss, brushed to the mountains of his knuckles. it was about betrayal, she doesn't say. of wanting someone in the dark, while they spin shadows around you, a true face eclipsed by a prettier lie. )
So let’s stop trying to rewrite the past. We can write something else now. Something new.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
his touch isn't one that beckons her to follow; alina is reminded of patted horses, easily spooked, as his fingertips smooth up and down the line of her legs, parted from the silken drape of a rich nightgown. like it isn't her duty to be the source of sunlight, the comforting glimpse of a horizon at the end of a tunnel. a sigh gusts from her, quieter than the rest, as her eyelids flicker shut — a curtain of privacy, playing pretending at being a confessional booth. )
You are my Paul.
( she says it the way saints speak of suffering: with reverence, with certainty. as if it's the only truth that's ever held her up. she forgets how young he is, sometimes, until he says things like that. i just want to be your paul. a boy housed in the divine vessel of a prophet. what a cruel thing it is, to be built for someone else's salvation, and never your own. )
I didn't marry a perfect man. I married you. I've stood through worse than getting cut on a man's rough edges. It's not like — ( her voice pauses, lowers, but doesn't falter. shame blurs the edges, softens the focus. a shake of her head across the pillow. ) It's not like you weren't right. About all of it.
no subject
he casts them away, blinking for the first time in a few minutes, head rolling as he falls back into himself. out of the galaxy, off starlight paths, back to the floral line of fairy lights that guide him right back to alina. he turns, hand to her arm and the top of her head, encouraging her to roll on her back. she doesn't have to, if she doesn't want to. regardless, paul bends to kiss her head, scooting back against the headboard.
i didn't marry a perfect man. i married you. maybe the kindest thing paul, the prophetical messiah and destroyer of the known world, has ever been told. )
I think ... it's alright to be angry. ( he loves her hair, the way it feels between his pinched fingertips. like the silk of fresh leaves. like mouse fur. like a secret. ) But it's not alright to be cruel. I don't want to be someone that hurts the people I love.
( one day he will be, he thinks. there is a certain inevitability to his cruelty. but, if he can manage one thing, let it be maintaining the softness between him and alina here tonight — cultivate it, protect it like a soldier. no darkness will seep in here, where alina is light and love and the axis by which his world tilts, singing alina, alina at the center knot of his heart. )
I didn't marry perfection, either. But I love you, my Alina, and I always will.
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.
no subject
( she could indeed have it, not because she's a saint, but because paul would give it to her. or maybe in equal halves because she is a saint and paul is the lisan al gaib, and neither one of them have gotten used to the power of getting something without having to earn it first. like alina. she once told him he earns her by being kind to her, soft with her. there were softer actions to take than threatening (see: attempting) to kill her temporary beloved. that's not to say paul has any soft feelings towards spike, but he does have them towards alina, who deserves the best of what he is. and what is he? a billion molecules with a billion faces, all turned towards her, wherever she is. it's ironic that she's the sun summoner, because she is exactly like the sun, all living things turning toward and basked in her revelry.
not that you would know it now, mopey as she is. a not undeserved sentiment, considering how the house has toyed with her as of late. )
You can have it, if you like. If I become irredeemable to you. I'll give you my throat, just above the shoulders. ( this is commented idly, too — like it's obvious the only medicine to alina's loathing is a knife to the throat. too gorey, too unromantic. reverend mothers hiss in his ear, but all he can think about is his head turned into a goblet, alina's mouth against his bones on every swallow. ) I guess some small hurts are inevitable, if you think like that. It's. ( he sighs, stroking at the path of her skin just above her heart. ) It's hard for me to say anything is inevitable. I can see the path, most of the time — inevitabilities are just the choices I've made, the paths I've walked.
The big hurts are the wrong steps. I know before, with the wedding, it wasn't you purposely hurting me. There's little to forgive, because I feel no anger towards you. Just ... ( he moves his hand, cupped under her chin, thumb against her lips. to suck on. ) Longing. Like I want all your attention to be on me, always. And I like being obsessed with you, I like loving you this much. Any ache is worth it.
The point is, I'm sorry. About how I handled your affliction, and about how I spoke to you about Alia, back then. It was a mistake, and you deserve better from me. And you'll get it.
( imminently. any ache is worth it. )
no subject
he can't possibly understand the weight of it, alina wants to say, until she thinks of the crysknife he handles like the fist of god itself — sacrificial blood drawn, in the ivory curve of shai-hulud's spent bones. the gift he would chisel from his skull as if it might bless her with the same strength, as if it's the natural course. his life, meant to defend her; his death, meant to serve her.
a frown furls across alina's mouth, all the same. she thinks of the darkling's skeleton, an imbued amplifier; thinks of the manner his death can only belong to her. thinks of the contract of loneliness it condemns her to, the cruelty of forcing her hand to end his destruction. the only obstruction from the spill of immediate rejection: paul's thumb pacifying her mouth, the instinctual part of her lips to accept him into her body, no matter where he enters. her cunt, her mouth, her mind, her bloodstream. it slips to her lower lip once they part around a breath, saliva-slick on her pink mouth. )
Love born from martyrdom never survives. You know that. Next time you want to offer me a gift, try flowers.
( a flare of sunlight behind her eyes, a glint of something golden and flashing — illuminated with too much emotion. )
You don't owe me, blood. You owed me the truth. ( a snagging at his wrist, loose — like a charm on a bracelet, dangling. a simple inscribed message: i forgive you. simple, easy to give — a mirrored reflection of his apology. ) It wasn't about Alia. Or ... the way you spoke, really. It was about the lies. The hiding. The secrets. Not knowing where I stood with you, or if I mattered. You saying this now — it helps. It's what I wanted from the start.
( a kiss, brushed to the mountains of his knuckles. it was about betrayal, she doesn't say. of wanting someone in the dark, while they spin shadows around you, a true face eclipsed by a prettier lie. )
So let’s stop trying to rewrite the past. We can write something else now. Something new.