[ She should tell her to drop them off but she's too selfish. Which shouldn't surprise Alina, in light of recent events. But if she retracts her offer to meet, Jess will respect her change of heart. And stake out Solskoye instead. ]
[ it seems obvious, but she also doesn't want to show up stupidly. and now that it's in the offing, it occurs to her that the terrible feeling she'd had on tumenalia could resurface. she'd joked with it to crais, but that jealousy had scared her. it felt ... it felt too much like a part of her, and not enough like a part of the city. ]
[ She's not too drunk. She doesn't trust herself to be as in good a condition if instead they set a date to keep. And god she wants somewhere to pass out that's not wedged between Marcos and Kisa. ]
[ no time to second guess. she kisses reggie goodbye as she slips out, sending jess a reminder of the address before making her way into the down. the guards don't give her any trouble about it. not when she has the papers for a business down there, not when she's a dominant who hasn't had so much as a parking ticket since she had just arrived.
she waits for jessica out front, hands tucked into the pockets of her wool jacket, surveying a young group of rubies across the straight as they smoke. ]
[ Figuring that Alina is coming from the Up, Jess packs her bag at her own pace. She takes everything she needs to spend a night or three: a change of clothes, her laptop, her camera, her thermos, and two bottles of liquor (one mostly empty, one unopened). On the elevator ride to the ground floor, she has a bracing swig of the vodka in her thermos. The air outside is crisp and sobering. Her least favourite thing about winter since becoming an alcoholic.
Alina's reminder is unnecessary. Jess goes by the building frequently, favouring bars in that neighborhood since the application was submitted. The only reason she's resisted breaking in is that it might endanger the approval. She wonders if the utilities have been turned on or if it will be freezing cold inside. It's easier to think about the office than about the person waiting for her there.
She's surprised to see that Alina's beaten her there. Glancing sidelong at the Rubies, she otherwise pays them no mind in passing by and crossing the street. They'll be stopping in tomorrow to arrange the monthly squeeze. Older members, hopefully. ]
Quit staring at them. [ Jess positions herself between Alina and the kids. ]
[ despite the quick snap, she pulls the keys out of her pocket and turns away from the group. even if she still feels like — ]
They look like they're up to something.
[ she will not feel guilty about feeling uncomfortable with the strong gang presence in the down. not when she can't help but associate it with the time she'd lost her powers and wound up jailed in a cell in the zoo, where dominants weren't even supposed to be, because it was all that was around.
she unlocks the door with stubborn focus and lets it swing open, stepping out of the way for jess to enter. the office interior is dusty, all peeled paint and the stale smell of forgotten paperwork. and cold. miserably so, with all the windows shuttered but for the few spots where the plastic blinds have broken. ]
[ They look like they're hanging around until there's something to be up to, and she'd like to not be that something. No point in saying it, though. Alina takes the advice despite the backchat, Jess rolling her eyes behind her back. She enters after her and closes the door. Locks it.
Her teeth grind. This was supposed to be a quick exchange. Now they're stuck with each other until the Rubies move on. Both women in the room know exactly whose safety that's for.
Maintaining silence, Jess takes a look around. Misery to Alina is invitation to Jessica. It's bare but for a few spindly chairs and a set of broken cabinets. Two drawers near the bottom appear to be functional, provided they aren't jammed. One above them hangs out halfway, twisted out of shape, and the others are on the floor, either set or strewn there. It's definitely not livable; nonetheless, Jess can't imagine calling anywhere else home now that it's hers.
She moves further in, towards a thermostat on the wall. Tests it. ] Battery's dead.
[ she doesn't really grasp the concept of thermostat batteries — she doesn't really grasp the concept of batteries, if she's being honest. but what this is really about is jessica announcing an inadequacy and alina scrambling to fill it.
lingering feels foolish, but then, it was jess who had locked the door.
the only furnishings are a single desk — without a chair — and a lamp someone had left behind because the shade was damaged significantly. absent anywhere to sit, alina goes to occupy herself with opening up the blinds. ]
[ A hard sigh streams from her nose. That wasn't what she was getting at. The point was that they should keep their jackets on to stay warm. Sometimes Jessica forgets that Alina isn't accustomed to technology. Otherwise she'd know how little batteries cost. ]
They're cheap. Don't worry about it.
[ The banality of the conversation needles her nerves. Jess endures it, approaching the desk and setting her bag on top. The alternatives are verbalizing her gratitude, which is unsettlingly profound, or kicking over the corpse of Tumenalia. She really ought to thank her. It's the least selfish option. But she still can't do it in so many words.
A gesture is going to have to do. She flips open the flap of her bag and fishes out the sealed bottle of vodka. ]
[ alina lingers at a distance all the same, even with that offering. or perhaps because of it. ]
You don't have to be kind to me. I'm not going to take it back.
[ because that's the only reason she can imagine jess is acting all normal for. alina had fought with her over the darkling, as if her connection to him were more precious and worthy of protection than what jess has given her. ]
[ She cracks the bottle, the snap of the seal as sharp as her response. Jess isn't trying to be nice, she's trying to be normal. It seemed like something Alina was trying to be too, based on the couple of conversations Jess spied of hers on the recent finder post. Must have missed out some key ones where that wasn't the case, though.
She has a deep pull of the bottle before setting it down on the desk with a muted thud. Planting her hands wide on the desk's edge, she hangs her head between crumpled shoulders as she swallows. If they can't pretend the fight didn't happen, then she has to choose how to broach it, and there are a thousand questions to ask and confessions to make. Picking one isn't nearly as difficult as pushing it past the veil of half-truths she spends all her life hiding behind. ]
[ someone should say it. not that alina has room to talk, when she's the one who got wasted enough to sign a contract with the darkling not so long ago, but the point remains.
anyway, judging is the only thing left to her other than leaning up against the window, arms crossed. she's certainly not going to rush out to meet the rubies. ]
[ Alright, that comes out bad. It sounds like an accusation. It looks like one, Jess raising her head to shoot a glare at her former contract partner. And an accusation is what it is, but she means it for herself. This is her fault, as was the confrontation at the bar. Motivated by her own interests.
She could have turned down the fight, tried to wrest Alina out of there without formality. She could have asked Alina how she's recovering the moment they got inside. She could have tried again to hunt down the Darkling, tranquilized him from afar, been smart about it, instead of stalk the Crested that victimized her during the festivities.
How Alina can stand to be around her this long without something to take the edge off is fucking mystifying. ]
[ she scowls, pushing away from the window. it's easy to look defensive when she feels miserable and like some part of her deserves that, really. the worst part is that alina can't even say she wasn't herself. she was. the alina starkov that jess had seen at tumenalia was the very one who mal had found and rejected at the little palace. the only substantive difference was the sex dripping off this city.
he'd called her a cosseted little princess. he'd been lucky, it seems. at least she hadn't run the risk of killing mal, the way she had sergei and jess and too many others, let alone the ones she had killed because of this feud with the darkling.
[ She turns, following Alina's path. ] Alina, wait.
[ No more deliberating. She's forced herself to put a stop to that. She says something now or she lets the guilt fester until the city inevitably, and in all likelihood publicly, draws it out of her. Or has Alina do it, pitted against her rage. What's worse is that she truly has no idea what's festering inside the girl, and for whom it's harbored. The only way to find out is to unstick herself from the mire of her own self-loathing for as brief a time as it takes to risk pulling someone else in with her. ]
[ alina drops her hand from the door. turns around to look at jessica, dumbfounded. no matter how she tries to square the math, it doesn't make sense.
either jessica is apologizing for saying something shitty, which has never happened and will never happen, especially when it's far from the shittiest thing she's ever said, or that anyone else has ever said to alina —
or she is apologizing for ... something else. equally bewildering, given that alina can't imagine a cause.
(alina stamps out, determinedly, any thoughts as to the effort to 'steal' the darkling.) ]
For what? [ said in a tone precisely as incredulous as something so absurd warrants. ]
[ What does she mean, for what? For failing her, for hurting her, for putting her in a position to hurt Jess back (and worse). For never doing quite enough to break her free of the Darkling's orbit, convince her that Jess can offer her safety and a place without judgment. For how she struggles to see Alina for Alina, and how she may never be able to put her first without the shadow of Trish and Hope polluting her silhouette. God damn, what does she have to be other than sorry? ]
For playing his game. [ Her words are still too pointed. She waves an arm towards the windows, as though he's peering through them. Their audience, again. ] For using you to get what I wanted. Letting this goddamn city get in my head and thinking for one single second I wanted it from him. [ Her hardness relents towards the end. Exhaustion bleeds in. She's supposed to be stronger than that. Not without respite and not without flaw, but around Alina? She needs to be. If she can't do that, she's nothing. ]
alina shuffles her feet because the shitty linoleum floor seems to tilt, threatening to unbalance her. like the funhouse mirrors at the carnival, this feels like a scene from her life but twisted beyond recognition. the first emotion she can grab onto is frustration, only because she can't figure out how to feel about this, how to make sense of it.
this isn't how it goes. she fucks up. someone takes the opportunity to read her every reason why it's all her fault. that's what it supposed to happen. alina just ... she just doesn't have a map for what this is supposed to look like, someone else taking the blame. if anything, jessica's apology erodes what lingering jealousy and resentment alina had built up over tumenalia and held onto, transforms it into grief and compassion. ]
That wasn't your fault. You— No one can stop the city from getting into their head. [ and as she says this, she realizes that maybe, just maybe, that includes herself. as it always has, when she says something of jessica's pain and pathological insistence on blaming herself for everything. ] I'm the one who crawled back to him in the first place.
[ She's right. It's the point the city's been making all along. It took nine months and several lesser torments for it to sink in at last. No amount of vigilance or number of precautions taken can protect her from LIEs' machinations. The last few months have been her fumbling to cope with her inability to protect others. Jessica herself became an afterthought.
No one was supposed to get hurt but her. ]
I don't care if you went back to him. [ She shakes her head, departing from the desk by a step. Truthfully, she doesn't. The frustration it causes is just to distance herself from the sadness. There may be something in Alina that she can see reflected in the Darkling. That she feels deprived of in anyone else. That the systems at work here manipulate and exacerbate into a driving force. Just because it's in her doesn't mean, under rational circumstances, she couldn't control it. ] That doesn't make you his dog. I knew that and I still fought you like one.
[ A muscle jumps in her jaw, clenched between confessions. ] What I did, the shit I let happen, was wrong.
[ ana kuya's orphanage, survival rule the first: don't let anyone see you cry.
it is so deeply ingrained in her that when the dam bursts, when duplicity gets to be too much, it's like some fundamental, load-bearing piece of her cracks and gives.
jessica's words cut too deep, too close to the bone. they always do, of course — usually, alina has the good sense to hide behind text, so she can mull it over and disconnect herself from it. to have her here in front of her, preempting it with such a disarming act of forgiveness, and with that distress plain in jessica's face, that guilt—
it reminds alina of every terrible thing she's done since she got here. every awful action that she justified, every unwelcome touch that she's excused. they rush up to meet her, bursting forth as tears that shock her in their force. she cups a hand over her mouth to stifle the sob, but it chokes out anyway.
it is a voice for everything alina has felt about her own behavior, but buried deep. all the ways she fears that she is worse for being here, but it's more than that. the effort to push back the tears contorts alina's face into a mess of ugly creases, and she tries failingly to wipe the tears faster than they can mount. ]
It happened to you. You didn't let it. We don't have to let it. We— [ she chokes on the words because they belie the something worse, something much worse, that closes up her throat. she does. she lets it. she avoids fighting it, finds excuses to steep herself in it, because it makes it all more tolerable. but jessica is brave and noble and good and beyond all that. ] I don't blame you. I'm doing this to myself. All of it.
[ because something is so fundamentally wrong with her, something that broke on the fold and she never got back, that she cannot be happy unless she's miserable. ]
[ A lump forms in Jess's throat as emotion overwhelms Alina. She doesn't realize how jagged it is until she swallows and her eyes prick. She suppresses the urge to rush to Alina, approaching with a restrained urgency. Cold air adheres to a wet line running the length of her cheek, spearing down her throat, and raises sensitive pinpricks across her clothed skin. She hasn't any mind to wipe it away. Jess places a hand against the flat of Alina's shoulder blade, palm and fanned fingertips, barely touching. ]
It's okay. [ It isn't, and to cajole her puts a strain on her heart. But this moment isn't about fixing anything. It's about breaking. Alina is allowed to break. Simple, soothing words to make sure she knows that are the first Jess has offered her that she doesn't doubt. An apology, an explanation, a vow to defend, -- these can be selfish. Jessica's only stake in comforting her is the fear that it's not enough. That somehow it will push Alina away. ] It's okay.
It's not. [ she shakes her head, even as she folds her arms around jessica to draw her closer, to steal more of that comfort. selfishly. ] You should hate me.
[ god, she feels so slim under alina's palms. she should have noticed that while they fought, but she'd tried to keep her distance, rely on her power, and she'd been distracted by jessica's own power. she packed such a punch for a woman just as tiny as alina.
alina hates herself. maybe enough for the both of them. or maybe jessica just doesn't understand, yet, hasn't put it together that — ]
I wish I could still be his pet. [ a sob shakes her. comes out as a wheeze. ] You should have been the Dominant. It's wasted on me. I can't do this. I can't — [ she stutters, hands shaking on jessica's bony back, eyes clouded by tears. ] Everything is so clear when I just let him — [ she can't get the rest of the sentence out. nothing has made sense since she'd rejected him. everything had been hard and terrible. all she wants is to set it down. an excuse to let herself. ]
[ She embraces Alina, whose body is as slight and fragile in her arms as it was at the pommel of her fist. Even smaller, flush to Jessica's taller frame. She pillows her cheek atop her hair and again forces down that saw-edged rock in her throat, summoning another tearfall. ]
I know.
[ In the past, Alina's insistence would have rung through Jess as an echo. Now she recognizes those last few faded refrains as the tenor of her own voice. Fitfully, she's reeled against the idea of belonging to anyone. But isn't that what she wanted from Marcos? For him to take control of her pain, shed a searing light on it and strip it of shame?
In execution, it's not the same. The Darkling sure as hell isn't Marcos. But Jessica understands the desire to be unburdened. ] I never stop fighting. [ The regret, the hurt, the temptation to give up. And they never stop fighting back. There is no time to heal or to rest. She's not a pillar of strength, she's an indictment of it. No one's hero, holding up no one's saint. ] I know.
[ it is not the first time it has occurred to her. quiet moments, in the little palace. when there is nothing demanding her immediate attention, when she feels alone and realizes the weight of it all, the unending nature of it all. even if she manages to kill the darkling, it only damns her to live and live and live all alone, an untouchable saint, praised and beloved in a manner so vapid that when she martyrs herself for them, they will pick her apart so they can sell her bones as tokens.
she boasts that she is sankta alina. and she wishes that she could stop being sankta alina. it is the closest she will ever come to love, and it is intolerable.
so she goes quiet, letting the shudders of her tears work their way through her body. she does not want jessica to understand. she doesn't want anyone to understand, but — but maybe this time, with that grieving chorus of i know, she is not alone at the bottom of this miserable well. and maybe that is something. ]
[ Jessica cries quietly. The occasional silent hitch of her breath rattles the hard stone composure she maintains against Alina's waves of tears. Her lip is pulled under her teeth, her thoughts devolving into I'm sorry spoken over and over, beating against the barricade of her tongue. She's sorry for this world and the world that twisted Alina into these unendurable contradictions. She's sorry that their weaknesses call to a hundred monsters for every lover.
She's sorry, still, for what she did. For proffering her guilt for the city to ply a masterwork of mistakes.
Her tears stop before Alina's do. The dry lanes they leave crack her skin and stretch it taut. Her throat feels bruised from the inside, the same as if she'd been screaming. Her brain throbs in her skull. The meagre contents of her stomach have turned to tar. But she won't let go until Alina issues the cue for space. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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[ She should tell her to drop them off but she's too selfish. Which shouldn't surprise Alina, in light of recent events. But if she retracts her offer to meet, Jess will respect her change of heart. And stake out Solskoye instead. ]
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now?
[ it seems obvious, but she also doesn't want to show up stupidly. and now that it's in the offing, it occurs to her that the terrible feeling she'd had on tumenalia could resurface. she'd joked with it to crais, but that jealousy had scared her. it felt ... it felt too much like a part of her, and not enough like a part of the city. ]
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[ She's not too drunk. She doesn't trust herself to be as in good a condition if instead they set a date to keep. And god she wants somewhere to pass out that's not wedged between Marcos and Kisa. ]
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[ no time to second guess. she kisses reggie goodbye as she slips out, sending jess a reminder of the address before making her way into the down. the guards don't give her any trouble about it. not when she has the papers for a business down there, not when she's a dominant who hasn't had so much as a parking ticket since she had just arrived.
she waits for jessica out front, hands tucked into the pockets of her wool jacket, surveying a young group of rubies across the straight as they smoke. ]
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Alina's reminder is unnecessary. Jess goes by the building frequently, favouring bars in that neighborhood since the application was submitted. The only reason she's resisted breaking in is that it might endanger the approval. She wonders if the utilities have been turned on or if it will be freezing cold inside. It's easier to think about the office than about the person waiting for her there.
She's surprised to see that Alina's beaten her there. Glancing sidelong at the Rubies, she otherwise pays them no mind in passing by and crossing the street. They'll be stopping in tomorrow to arrange the monthly squeeze. Older members, hopefully. ]
Quit staring at them. [ Jess positions herself between Alina and the kids. ]
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[ despite the quick snap, she pulls the keys out of her pocket and turns away from the group. even if she still feels like — ]
They look like they're up to something.
[ she will not feel guilty about feeling uncomfortable with the strong gang presence in the down. not when she can't help but associate it with the time she'd lost her powers and wound up jailed in a cell in the zoo, where dominants weren't even supposed to be, because it was all that was around.
she unlocks the door with stubborn focus and lets it swing open, stepping out of the way for jess to enter. the office interior is dusty, all peeled paint and the stale smell of forgotten paperwork. and cold. miserably so, with all the windows shuttered but for the few spots where the plastic blinds have broken. ]
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Her teeth grind. This was supposed to be a quick exchange. Now they're stuck with each other until the Rubies move on. Both women in the room know exactly whose safety that's for.
Maintaining silence, Jess takes a look around. Misery to Alina is invitation to Jessica. It's bare but for a few spindly chairs and a set of broken cabinets. Two drawers near the bottom appear to be functional, provided they aren't jammed. One above them hangs out halfway, twisted out of shape, and the others are on the floor, either set or strewn there. It's definitely not livable; nonetheless, Jess can't imagine calling anywhere else home now that it's hers.
She moves further in, towards a thermostat on the wall. Tests it. ] Battery's dead.
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[ she doesn't really grasp the concept of thermostat batteries — she doesn't really grasp the concept of batteries, if she's being honest. but what this is really about is jessica announcing an inadequacy and alina scrambling to fill it.
lingering feels foolish, but then, it was jess who had locked the door.
the only furnishings are a single desk — without a chair — and a lamp someone had left behind because the shade was damaged significantly. absent anywhere to sit, alina goes to occupy herself with opening up the blinds. ]
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They're cheap. Don't worry about it.
[ The banality of the conversation needles her nerves. Jess endures it, approaching the desk and setting her bag on top. The alternatives are verbalizing her gratitude, which is unsettlingly profound, or kicking over the corpse of Tumenalia. She really ought to thank her. It's the least selfish option. But she still can't do it in so many words.
A gesture is going to have to do. She flips open the flap of her bag and fishes out the sealed bottle of vodka. ]
Promised you a drink, didn't I.
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You don't have to be kind to me. I'm not going to take it back.
[ because that's the only reason she can imagine jess is acting all normal for. alina had fought with her over the darkling, as if her connection to him were more precious and worthy of protection than what jess has given her. ]
no subject
[ She cracks the bottle, the snap of the seal as sharp as her response. Jess isn't trying to be nice, she's trying to be normal. It seemed like something Alina was trying to be too, based on the couple of conversations Jess spied of hers on the recent finder post. Must have missed out some key ones where that wasn't the case, though.
She has a deep pull of the bottle before setting it down on the desk with a muted thud. Planting her hands wide on the desk's edge, she hangs her head between crumpled shoulders as she swallows. If they can't pretend the fight didn't happen, then she has to choose how to broach it, and there are a thousand questions to ask and confessions to make. Picking one isn't nearly as difficult as pushing it past the veil of half-truths she spends all her life hiding behind. ]
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[ someone should say it. not that alina has room to talk, when she's the one who got wasted enough to sign a contract with the darkling not so long ago, but the point remains.
anyway, judging is the only thing left to her other than leaning up against the window, arms crossed. she's certainly not going to rush out to meet the rubies. ]
cw: dubcon ref
[ Alright, that comes out bad. It sounds like an accusation. It looks like one, Jess raising her head to shoot a glare at her former contract partner. And an accusation is what it is, but she means it for herself. This is her fault, as was the confrontation at the bar. Motivated by her own interests.
She could have turned down the fight, tried to wrest Alina out of there without formality. She could have asked Alina how she's recovering the moment they got inside. She could have tried again to hunt down the Darkling, tranquilized him from afar, been smart about it, instead of stalk the Crested that victimized her during the festivities.
How Alina can stand to be around her this long without something to take the edge off is fucking mystifying. ]
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[ she scowls, pushing away from the window. it's easy to look defensive when she feels miserable and like some part of her deserves that, really. the worst part is that alina can't even say she wasn't herself. she was. the alina starkov that jess had seen at tumenalia was the very one who mal had found and rejected at the little palace. the only substantive difference was the sex dripping off this city.
he'd called her a cosseted little princess. he'd been lucky, it seems. at least she hadn't run the risk of killing mal, the way she had sergei and jess and too many others, let alone the ones she had killed because of this feud with the darkling.
she heads for the door. unbolts the lock. ]
no subject
[ She turns, following Alina's path. ] Alina, wait.
[ No more deliberating. She's forced herself to put a stop to that. She says something now or she lets the guilt fester until the city inevitably, and in all likelihood publicly, draws it out of her. Or has Alina do it, pitted against her rage. What's worse is that she truly has no idea what's festering inside the girl, and for whom it's harbored. The only way to find out is to unstick herself from the mire of her own self-loathing for as brief a time as it takes to risk pulling someone else in with her. ]
I'm sorry.
no subject
[ alina drops her hand from the door. turns around to look at jessica, dumbfounded. no matter how she tries to square the math, it doesn't make sense.
either jessica is apologizing for saying something shitty, which has never happened and will never happen, especially when it's far from the shittiest thing she's ever said, or that anyone else has ever said to alina —
or she is apologizing for ... something else. equally bewildering, given that alina can't imagine a cause.
(alina stamps out, determinedly, any thoughts as to the effort to 'steal' the darkling.) ]
For what? [ said in a tone precisely as incredulous as something so absurd warrants. ]
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For playing his game. [ Her words are still too pointed. She waves an arm towards the windows, as though he's peering through them. Their audience, again. ] For using you to get what I wanted. Letting this goddamn city get in my head and thinking for one single second I wanted it from him. [ Her hardness relents towards the end. Exhaustion bleeds in. She's supposed to be stronger than that. Not without respite and not without flaw, but around Alina? She needs to be. If she can't do that, she's nothing. ]
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alina shuffles her feet because the shitty linoleum floor seems to tilt, threatening to unbalance her. like the funhouse mirrors at the carnival, this feels like a scene from her life but twisted beyond recognition. the first emotion she can grab onto is frustration, only because she can't figure out how to feel about this, how to make sense of it.
this isn't how it goes. she fucks up. someone takes the opportunity to read her every reason why it's all her fault. that's what it supposed to happen. alina just ... she just doesn't have a map for what this is supposed to look like, someone else taking the blame. if anything, jessica's apology erodes what lingering jealousy and resentment alina had built up over tumenalia and held onto, transforms it into grief and compassion. ]
That wasn't your fault. You— No one can stop the city from getting into their head. [ and as she says this, she realizes that maybe, just maybe, that includes herself. as it always has, when she says something of jessica's pain and pathological insistence on blaming herself for everything. ] I'm the one who crawled back to him in the first place.
no subject
No one was supposed to get hurt but her. ]
I don't care if you went back to him. [ She shakes her head, departing from the desk by a step. Truthfully, she doesn't. The frustration it causes is just to distance herself from the sadness. There may be something in Alina that she can see reflected in the Darkling. That she feels deprived of in anyone else. That the systems at work here manipulate and exacerbate into a driving force. Just because it's in her doesn't mean, under rational circumstances, she couldn't control it. ] That doesn't make you his dog. I knew that and I still fought you like one.
[ A muscle jumps in her jaw, clenched between confessions. ] What I did, the shit I let happen, was wrong.
cw: dubcon, mental ... illness
it is so deeply ingrained in her that when the dam bursts, when duplicity gets to be too much, it's like some fundamental, load-bearing piece of her cracks and gives.
jessica's words cut too deep, too close to the bone. they always do, of course — usually, alina has the good sense to hide behind text, so she can mull it over and disconnect herself from it. to have her here in front of her, preempting it with such a disarming act of forgiveness, and with that distress plain in jessica's face, that guilt—
it reminds alina of every terrible thing she's done since she got here. every awful action that she justified, every unwelcome touch that she's excused. they rush up to meet her, bursting forth as tears that shock her in their force. she cups a hand over her mouth to stifle the sob, but it chokes out anyway.
it is a voice for everything alina has felt about her own behavior, but buried deep. all the ways she fears that she is worse for being here, but it's more than that. the effort to push back the tears contorts alina's face into a mess of ugly creases, and she tries failingly to wipe the tears faster than they can mount. ]
It happened to you. You didn't let it. We don't have to let it. We— [ she chokes on the words because they belie the something worse, something much worse, that closes up her throat. she does. she lets it. she avoids fighting it, finds excuses to steep herself in it, because it makes it all more tolerable. but jessica is brave and noble and good and beyond all that. ] I don't blame you. I'm doing this to myself. All of it.
[ because something is so fundamentally wrong with her, something that broke on the fold and she never got back, that she cannot be happy unless she's miserable. ]
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It's okay. [ It isn't, and to cajole her puts a strain on her heart. But this moment isn't about fixing anything. It's about breaking. Alina is allowed to break. Simple, soothing words to make sure she knows that are the first Jess has offered her that she doesn't doubt. An apology, an explanation, a vow to defend, -- these can be selfish. Jessica's only stake in comforting her is the fear that it's not enough. That somehow it will push Alina away. ] It's okay.
(cw: thomas had never seen such a mess)
[ god, she feels so slim under alina's palms. she should have noticed that while they fought, but she'd tried to keep her distance, rely on her power, and she'd been distracted by jessica's own power. she packed such a punch for a woman just as tiny as alina.
alina hates herself. maybe enough for the both of them. or maybe jessica just doesn't understand, yet, hasn't put it together that — ]
I wish I could still be his pet. [ a sob shakes her. comes out as a wheeze. ] You should have been the Dominant. It's wasted on me. I can't do this. I can't — [ she stutters, hands shaking on jessica's bony back, eyes clouded by tears. ] Everything is so clear when I just let him — [ she can't get the rest of the sentence out. nothing has made sense since she'd rejected him. everything had been hard and terrible. all she wants is to set it down. an excuse to let herself. ]
cw dubcon masochism, suicide ideation
I know.
[ In the past, Alina's insistence would have rung through Jess as an echo. Now she recognizes those last few faded refrains as the tenor of her own voice. Fitfully, she's reeled against the idea of belonging to anyone. But isn't that what she wanted from Marcos? For him to take control of her pain, shed a searing light on it and strip it of shame?
In execution, it's not the same. The Darkling sure as hell isn't Marcos. But Jessica understands the desire to be unburdened. ] I never stop fighting. [ The regret, the hurt, the temptation to give up. And they never stop fighting back. There is no time to heal or to rest. She's not a pillar of strength, she's an indictment of it. No one's hero, holding up no one's saint. ] I know.
cw: more suicidal ideation
[ it is not the first time it has occurred to her. quiet moments, in the little palace. when there is nothing demanding her immediate attention, when she feels alone and realizes the weight of it all, the unending nature of it all. even if she manages to kill the darkling, it only damns her to live and live and live all alone, an untouchable saint, praised and beloved in a manner so vapid that when she martyrs herself for them, they will pick her apart so they can sell her bones as tokens.
she boasts that she is sankta alina. and she wishes that she could stop being sankta alina. it is the closest she will ever come to love, and it is intolerable.
so she goes quiet, letting the shudders of her tears work their way through her body. she does not want jessica to understand. she doesn't want anyone to understand, but — but maybe this time, with that grieving chorus of i know, she is not alone at the bottom of this miserable well. and maybe that is something. ]
cw dubcon ref if you squint
She's sorry, still, for what she did. For proffering her guilt for the city to ply a masterwork of mistakes.
Her tears stop before Alina's do. The dry lanes they leave crack her skin and stretch it taut. Her throat feels bruised from the inside, the same as if she'd been screaming. Her brain throbs in her skull. The meagre contents of her stomach have turned to tar. But she won't let go until Alina issues the cue for space. ]
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