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[sunmon]

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[sunmon]

you're avoiding the point.
which i guess means you know that i'm right.
you don't have it in you to forgive anyone. how can you ask it of me?

[morozova]

Because you're better than I am.

[sunmon]

i was better.
before you got your claws in me.

[morozova]

Is that the truth or are you afraid that you might be more than Alina the mouse, after all?

[sunmon]

i've never been a mouse.
but i was never cruel, either.

[morozova]

Sadly that is the cost of leadership: ugly hard choices that whittle away at you.

[sunmon]

i never asked to lead.

[ a lie. she realizes it as soon as she sends it. she had demanded the king make her leader of the second army. she scrubs her hands over her face. ]

not until i had to deal with you.
if there's no leadership without cruelty maybe i don't want to lead at all.

[morozova]

None of us do.
The Old King didn't ask my feelings on the matter, either, when he had me form the Second Army.
But I made it mine.

[sunmon]

you made the grisha your tools.
and you became a monster.
i don't want that.

[ she'd been so lonely. so isolated. that's how the tether kept snapping between them. she was calling out to him, drawing him to her. she can feel it trying to do the same now. ]

i don't want to be like you.

[morozova]

Given the alternative that awaited many of them, they were all too happy to make that decision.
You've only ever known Ravka, Alina. And a relatively tame one to what it once was precisely because of the Grisha that trusted me to make the choices that would give them a life other than fear.

So, yes, perhaps I am a monster.
But a man would never have been able to do what I have done. And I will have to shoulder the weight of that for as long as I live.

[sunmon]

and a man would never be able to stop you either.
that's how you're making one of me, too.

[ can he shoulder that weight? ]

i don't know how to forgive you for what you've done.

[morozova]

How fortunate then that you were never anything so ordinary.
Even if it's taken you so long to see it.

Then don't.
Hate me if it's easier. It would be deserved.

[sunmon]

i don't want to be a monster like you.
i want to be able to forgive people.
i want to be able to trust people.
even you.

[morozova]

Then be that.
But forgiveness does not need to be immediate. If there's one luxury we do have it's time.

[sunmon]

i don't feel like i have time.
i feel like every day, i'm losing something i'll never get back.
my humanity, maybe.

[morozova]

I think that is true for anyone with the kind of power you hold.

Leaving aside our admittedly fraught history do you want my advice?

[sunmon]

i would rather perform a striptease for the ice court.

[morozova]

I wouldn't advise it.
The Fjerdans were never known for their sense of humor so your efforts would be utterly wasted on them.

[sunmon]

and still you advise me.
i suspected i stood no chance of stopping you

[morozova]

This time I asked first.
Consider it progress.

As to the initial point: my mother kept me isolated for most of my early life. I never learned how to be an ordinary child.
You have that chance: use it.

[sunmon]

i haven't been a child in years. i joined the first army, you'll recall.
actually im not sure i ever was. i was so young when i lost my parents.
but please, tell me what a child would do in my position in the city that demands our compliance through sex while requiring i exert my will over others.

[morozova]

Find that one thing that helps you keep it together until tomorrow.
And let tomorrow's battles be for tomorrow.

[sunmon]

i think you misconceive the wisdom of children.

[ and he could get a lot done in a single day if she took the day off fighting him. ]

enough of that. you must have wanted more than to humble yourself at my feet when you messaged. what is it?

[morozova]

Forgive me.
As I said, I'm old and clearly out of touch.

I want your permission to change residences eventually.
I'll find it and pay for it myself, of course. In the Down rather than the Up.

[sunmon]

ah.
not going to ask permission to return to changing the sun summoner's bed linens?