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[sunmon]

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[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?

[morozova]

Pleasant as our time together was, I think you vastly prefer me at a distance and I'm inclined to humor your need for the time being.

[sunmon]

it sounds a bit like you aren't sorry at all, and you just wanted to say the right things to get out of your punishment.

[morozova]

How, then, shall I convince you?

[sunmon]

what's in the down, aleksander?
why do you want to stay there?

[ she's being all the things she hates being. paranoid. controlling. but there's something instinctual about yanking back that carefully cast trust when she finds that all his talk of inviting whatever punishment she deemed fit had been only in pursuit of undoing the one she'd levied.

and there's the other wound. the one that can't help but take this as not a willingness to give her space, but a desire to keep away from her. ]

[morozova]

I like the lack of scrutiny.

You'll have the address and a key, of course.

[sunmon]

you like not having to humble yourself to me.
do letters make it easier to stomach? getting it out of the way so it can be done with?

[morozova]

Do you think I'm leaving you, Alina?

[sunmon]

i think you're using me.

[morozova]

Explain to me how.

[sunmon]

you pretended to feel guilty, blamed the city for what you did, all to trick me into forgiving you so that you could get out of that apartment.

but not back into my house. no, you want somewhere that i can't control you.

[morozova]

You can't control me. But you already know that.
And I don't think you want to, truthfully. Even if you're trying to convince yourself otherwise.

You don't want me in your home, Alina.
Right now you want to be safe, and so I'm offering you that while allowing you the choice when and on what terms you see me. Because when have I refused you anything, truly? Your little tracker friend, aside.

[sunmon]

how kind of you to spare me the trouble of deciding how i feel.