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. ]
[ when she feels jessica's breath stop shuddering, alina starts to draw deep of her own, trying to pull herself back together. one piece at a time. like picking up discarded clothes from the floor, trying not to look sheepish or ashamed all the while. her grip loosens self consciously.
when she withdraws — one hand first, wiping her nose. ]
Sorry. About your tanktop.
[ it is a mess of alina's tears and snot now, if they're being honest. at least one strap. in her sheepishness, she pulls her other hand back, but the step she takes back is shuffled. small. as if desperate to hold jessica's warmth as a bulwark against the chilly office air, which creeps in now, stinging her cheeks.
she swallows, her throat thick with mucus. looks around the office. aside from jessica's flask, there's nothing to drink from, even if there is a small bathroom (with a sink, presumably) at the edge of the office. ]
[ Jess glances down at the damage, then shrugs. It's disgusting, sure, but her clothes have been through worse. Maybe not this particular tanktop but collectively they've seen some shit. She gets the sense from the reluctance of Alina's parting that she would be disappointed were Jess to act on the thirst she has for the nearby vodka. The tenuousness of her trust is greater in the denouement of her breakdown than at its peak so Jessica complies, stays where she is.
Food sounds simultaneously daunting and vitally stabilizing. She clears her throat to flatten any crackle in her voice. It still scrapes coming out. ]
Pizza? [ They won't have to wait out the preparation if they order by the slice. It's Alina's idea. Jess doesn't pull out her device, nor does she plan on splitting hairs over payment. For once. ]
[ alina pulls her phone from her pocket. she sniffs. the question makes it easier. this feels almost normal, even if her head is pounding with teary dehydration. ]
[ Still? She bites her tongue on that. Alina has no problem with the Up and the Up feels the same way about her. Down here, her bare neck can cause her grief. And Jess really doesn't want to see the kind of grief Alina can cause them in return. ]
Time Heister's. By LIErs for LIErs. [ It may not be the best pizza around but it comes with the guarantee that no one's spit on it.
She trusts Alina to focus on that for a moment, allowing Jess to step away and grab the chairs. She places them at the desk for a makeshift dinner table, setting them in perpendicular positions rather than across from one another. ]
[ she's awkward on the phone. stilted, too-long pauses and an effort to look at the phone as she speaks even though it's not a video call. she hasn't quite gotten the hang of this. but she places the order and makes the payment and, as she puts her phone away, notices the chairs. ]
[ Her response isn't defensive. Most people would see this place for the dilapidated wreck that it is. To Jess, what it's not is what makes it welcoming. It's not monitored, it's not pretentious, it's not stolen or gifted or borrowed. It's not any of the couches she's crashed on or garages she's stowed her shit. It's hers, even if she doesn't have the legal right to claim that.
It is, however, still cold. She goes to the filing cabinets to gather some empty folders. She finds a metal trash can hiding between the cabinet and the wall, tucked away in the corner. Jess tosses the papers in, then pries free a length of broken baseboard that was coming away from the wall. She returns to the desk where she tears the folders in half and crumples them into balls, dropping them back in the can. The baseboard she snaps into pieces and arranges in a makeshift campfire.
Putting the trash can on the floor between the chairs, she asks Alina, ] Got a light?
You really want an Inferni for this kind of thing.
[ but she looks down at the wastebasket, considers it. enough light can produce enough heat. it's just a matter of triggering the reaction, somehow. alina leans down, elbows on her knees. ]
You might want to look away. [ the light she'll be working with might be blinding. she tries to cup it in her hands, but it leaks through the seams of her fingers like trickling grains of sand. sweat beads on alina's brow, but her skin takes on a warm, healthy glow in spite of it. like the exertion is feeding her, not feeding off of her. ]
[ Jess leans a hip to the edge of the desk, averting her eyes. She can't help but watch Alina's face in case what she's asked of her is too taxing. (And because watching the light bleed from her hands might recall another set of shameful memories.) Everyone's powers work different. Marcos's don't seem to require any effort to use. The Darkling's seem similarly effortless but he does claim to have had hundreds of years to perfect the process. Kisa turns into a damn snake.
The last and only time she saw Alina's in action, curiosity wasn't wasn't her priority.
The light that catches her face accentuates a sort of inner glow Jess can't really put her finger on. Suffice it to say she doesn't end up regretting her request. ]
[ accepting this has taken a while. she was grisha before she met the darkling, before she went to the little palace. she'll be grisha until she dies. there's no helping that. ]
But I hadn't used my power until ... last year? The year before, I guess. [ counting duplicity time. it's hard to figure out how to frame that. ] When I was a kid, I was always really sick. That's what it does to us, hiding it.
[ Nearly a year has passed for them both. Jessica is resigned to counting it. It's wasted, ruined time, regardless of whether or not she'll forget it. It happened. She's been robbed of months of her life before and nothing gets them back. ]
You're damn good for just two years. [ Holding something like that in has to hurt. She won't ask if she hid it on purpose, won't assume either way even though she doubts it (What child chooses to be sick?). Alina has expressed plenty of her burden already. ] I've had mine for eighteen.
Everyone in Ravka was very committed to my instruction.
[ she looks at her hands, rubs her fingers a moment, then smiles up at jess. it's a strained sort of smile. her home only seems to bring those kinds of expressions to her face. ]
To them, I'm a saint. [ the mantle that duplicity has thrust upon her doesn't feel entirely different. an honor, doubling as a yoke. ]
And it's not all my own doing. [ she holds out her hand, lifts her wrist to indicate the fetter of shining sea dragon's scales upon it. they cling so tight to her wrist as to look nearly embedded. a bracelet she's never without, just like the collar of antlers around her neck. ]
These aren't for decoration. They're amplifiers. [ her other hand rests on the stag collar. ] Made from creatures born of Sankt Illya's finger bones. They strengthen Grisha.
[ An impressed huff. She wonders what amplifiers would look like for the people she's met. She can picture similar bracelets on Rand's hands, not like he needs more power when he barely knows what to do with the amount he's already got. Matt and Luke are too nebulous. If the wrong people had their way, they'd probably just jam them full of drugs and see what happened. ]
You arrived with those? [ Awfully kind of the program.
Jess splays her own unadorned hands towards the fire, warmth welling in her palms. ]
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no subject
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. ]
no subject
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. ]
no subject
when she withdraws — one hand first, wiping her nose. ]
Sorry. About your tanktop.
[ it is a mess of alina's tears and snot now, if they're being honest. at least one strap. in her sheepishness, she pulls her other hand back, but the step she takes back is shuffled. small. as if desperate to hold jessica's warmth as a bulwark against the chilly office air, which creeps in now, stinging her cheeks.
she swallows, her throat thick with mucus. looks around the office. aside from jessica's flask, there's nothing to drink from, even if there is a small bathroom (with a sink, presumably) at the edge of the office. ]
Do you want to ... order something to eat?
no subject
Food sounds simultaneously daunting and vitally stabilizing. She clears her throat to flatten any crackle in her voice. It still scrapes coming out. ]
Pizza? [ They won't have to wait out the preparation if they order by the slice. It's Alina's idea. Jess doesn't pull out her device, nor does she plan on splitting hairs over payment. For once. ]
no subject
[ alina pulls her phone from her pocket. she sniffs. the question makes it easier. this feels almost normal, even if her head is pounding with teary dehydration. ]
I don't know my way around down here.
no subject
Time Heister's. By LIErs for LIErs. [ It may not be the best pizza around but it comes with the guarantee that no one's spit on it.
She trusts Alina to focus on that for a moment, allowing Jess to step away and grab the chairs. She places them at the desk for a makeshift dinner table, setting them in perpendicular positions rather than across from one another. ]
no subject
Homey.
[ ironically put ]
no subject
[ Her response isn't defensive. Most people would see this place for the dilapidated wreck that it is. To Jess, what it's not is what makes it welcoming. It's not monitored, it's not pretentious, it's not stolen or gifted or borrowed. It's not any of the couches she's crashed on or garages she's stowed her shit. It's hers, even if she doesn't have the legal right to claim that.
It is, however, still cold. She goes to the filing cabinets to gather some empty folders. She finds a metal trash can hiding between the cabinet and the wall, tucked away in the corner. Jess tosses the papers in, then pries free a length of broken baseboard that was coming away from the wall. She returns to the desk where she tears the folders in half and crumples them into balls, dropping them back in the can. The baseboard she snaps into pieces and arranges in a makeshift campfire.
Putting the trash can on the floor between the chairs, she asks Alina, ] Got a light?
no subject
[ but she looks down at the wastebasket, considers it. enough light can produce enough heat. it's just a matter of triggering the reaction, somehow. alina leans down, elbows on her knees. ]
You might want to look away. [ the light she'll be working with might be blinding. she tries to cup it in her hands, but it leaks through the seams of her fingers like trickling grains of sand. sweat beads on alina's brow, but her skin takes on a warm, healthy glow in spite of it. like the exertion is feeding her, not feeding off of her. ]
no subject
The last and only time she saw Alina's in action, curiosity wasn't wasn't her priority.
The light that catches her face accentuates a sort of inner glow Jess can't really put her finger on. Suffice it to say she doesn't end up regretting her request. ]
How long have you had them? Your abilities.
no subject
[ accepting this has taken a while. she was grisha before she met the darkling, before she went to the little palace. she'll be grisha until she dies. there's no helping that. ]
But I hadn't used my power until ... last year? The year before, I guess. [ counting duplicity time. it's hard to figure out how to frame that. ] When I was a kid, I was always really sick. That's what it does to us, hiding it.
no subject
You're damn good for just two years. [ Holding something like that in has to hurt. She won't ask if she hid it on purpose, won't assume either way even though she doubts it (What child chooses to be sick?). Alina has expressed plenty of her burden already. ] I've had mine for eighteen.
no subject
[ she looks at her hands, rubs her fingers a moment, then smiles up at jess. it's a strained sort of smile. her home only seems to bring those kinds of expressions to her face. ]
To them, I'm a saint. [ the mantle that duplicity has thrust upon her doesn't feel entirely different. an honor, doubling as a yoke. ]
And it's not all my own doing. [ she holds out her hand, lifts her wrist to indicate the fetter of shining sea dragon's scales upon it. they cling so tight to her wrist as to look nearly embedded. a bracelet she's never without, just like the collar of antlers around her neck. ]
These aren't for decoration. They're amplifiers. [ her other hand rests on the stag collar. ] Made from creatures born of Sankt Illya's finger bones. They strengthen Grisha.
no subject
You arrived with those? [ Awfully kind of the program.
Jess splays her own unadorned hands towards the fire, warmth welling in her palms. ]
no subject
[ she tilts her head to the side. let's not give them too much credit. the fire caught, alina settles back in her seat, sighing. ]
That's the price for seeking power. No matter how righteous the intention.