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[sunmon]

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[sunmon]

you don't owe me an apology
i'm not a saint

[seaboard]

I most certainly do, my lady, I spoke crossly with you and there shall never be an excuse to resort to such manners.

[sunmon]

i deserved worse
i still do

[seaboard]

Lady Alina, that could never be true!
Whatever causes you to think such a way?

[sunmon]

i've done a lot worse than take a nasty tone with someone
that's all

[seaboard]

I do not mean to press, truly.
But this does not sound like you at all.

[sunmon]

well, we never got to know each other very well.

[seaboard]

Perhaps not as well as we could have, no.

But I certainly would like to get to know you better.

[sunmon]

you shouldn't
i'm
i think i'm like poison

[seaboard]

Whoever told you such a thing?
No one is poison, no one. Especially not you.

[sunmon]

all i do is hurt people around me
sooner or later
(that's the poison part)
do you know anyone like that
everyone seems worse off for getting to know them

[seaboard]

... Only one. We spoke of him, do you recall?

And believe me, Alina, you are nothing like him.

[sunmon]

we have one thing in common

[seaboard]

And what is that?

[sunmon]

two, actually
blood on our hands
and we hurt the poeple we love the most

[seaboard]

[ She breathes out slowly. Right.

Right. ]

I think sometimes others would have us think that. Especially when it suits them, to have us diminish ourselves to nothing but are barest, broken parts.

But if you would permit me such bluntness of truth: it is not true. What made my brother so wicked was not his ambition alone, not his love, it was simply that he never cared. He never cared how he hurt anyone. Even when he died, he would blame anyone else than himself for his actions. He said he loved me as his sister to make me never leave him and that he trusted me, but in the end, he screamed I was a sneaking whore who just wanted the throne that had done this to him and he'd cut my eyes from my head if he could but reach me.

It was always someone else's fault. Never his, he was always above blame of his own action.

By your own admittance, by your own care to worry that you have ever hurt someone, even someone you do not consider close as me - you are not like him, or any such creature with such vanity in their heart.

And you are not poison. You may make mistakes, you may be fearful, hurt and frightened and that clouds the judgment of even the noblest of hearts - but that is not poison, that is to be a person, heart and soul. You are to your own credit that you would seek to remedy it when offered the opportunity, rather than blame more and seek petty vengence.

[sunmon]

i'm not above petty vengeance.
the darkling could tell you all about that.

[ but gilia's words have made a mark, all the same. indelible, impossible to ignore. it sits like a greater weight in alina's chest than even her guilt — it demands reconciliation. ]

everyone here is hurt and frightened.
not everyone here is a murderer.
you would never do something like that.

[seaboard]

Someone wronged me very deeply. In a way, I can scarcely express. Here, in this city.

I exploded his door because he refused to answer me.

[sunmon]

you did?

[seaboard]

He is a Dominant too.

I was punished for it.

And I tell you were it not for the beating I received that left me so unable to move, I think I may have torn it apart again in that moment for all I suffered because of him.

[sunmon]

i didn't know

[seaboard]

It was before your time here, I believe.

My point is simply, goodness is not easy, and any who simply pretend we do not feel, act, and burn as we do? I wonder what fearsome thing their heart is made from. We all of us bear so much in this city too. More than any heart should take and for little enough reason as to ever be worth such pain.

[sunmon]

and that excuses the pain we inflict on each other?
when there's no end to it, and we might just do it again?
how is what i did different than the man you tried to take vengeance on?

[seaboard]

It does not.

The difference is the pain you feel now, that you should even think this way you do now, to even want to make amends, to grapple what is the right and wrong of it?

Poisonous souls do not care. Poisonous souls say good, let them suffer, and let all else fall aside.

They would not express a desire to do better, as you do now with me.

[sunmon]

maybe i don't want to do better
maybe i'm tired because no matter how much i fight it here i never do it right
it just gets worse
i just get worse