@duplicitynet inbox

[sunmon]

Comments

[sunmon]

Come back and I'll burn through more of you.

[ it's a threat, not a real offer, but it helps mask the spike of simultaneous pride and fear that she feels. how powerful must the sea whip have made her if she can drive back the merzost that's creeping through him? how inhuman must she be, now? ]

[morozova]

Tempting, but I find the novelty of discomfort wears off rather quickly.
And I do have a job to do, after all.

[sunmon]

I can do more than discomfort.

[morozova]

I'm well aware.

( you can practically hear the cut of his smirk. )

[sunmon]

So this is you begging me to treat you like a dog again?

[morozova]

Are you planning to lace my food or will you try it honestly this time?

[sunmon]

Is that something you care about now?
You didn't think it made a difference at the car wash.

[morozova]

Oh, I'm not faulting your taking advantage. Merely pointing out that you might find a second attempt more challenging without the assistance.
You know how sharp my bite can be.
Though, perhaps I'm wrong in doubting you. You seem to be finally finding your claws, myshka.

[sunmon]

I'm not doing this because I enjoy it. I know what it takes to survive here without giving them an excuse to punish me.

[morozova]

You seem to enjoy being worshipped.

[sunmon]

You don't know what you're talking about.

[morozova]

Don't I?
Have you never considered that it might be your due, the adoration? Given who you are.

( who not what, because as much as she likes to think he sees only her power it goes so much deeper than that. perhaps that's why he refuses to let go of her now. why, instead, he stubbornly digs in his fingers, like he would keep her with him by will alone. )

Eventually that fear will cease to serve you, and what then, I wonder.

[sunmon]

Of course you'd feel that way.

No one is entitled to anything in this life, least of all worship. The very same people who worship me wouldn't have looked twice at a nothing orphan from Keramzin.

Did you know Duke Keramsov didn't even recognize me?

None of them will believe me due their worship if I fail to destroy you and the Fold. They only tolerate me in hopes that I'll free them. That has nothing to do with me.

[morozova]

Duke Keramsov is a senile old fool who was irrelevant even when he was hale and hearty. ( he should be kinder, he knows. a part of him still wants to do that, be kind for her, but they passed that point when she left him to die the first time. )

You are determined to reduce yourself to something palatable and yet surprised when others do the same to you.
Honestly, Alina.
If you are so determined to prove yourself my equal, stop shying from your claws and start using them.

[sunmon]

I don't have to prove anything to you.
I'm not your equal. I'm your better.

[morozova]

And yet you keep apologizing.
They need you more than you need them. You realize this, surely?

[sunmon]

They need me the same way you do.
As long as they believe they can use my power for themselves.

[morozova]

I don't need you.
I want you.
There's a breadth of difference between the two.

[sunmon]

You can't use the Fold without me.

[morozova]

There is no Fold, here.

( and he's still following her around like the proverbial bad smell. has she considered why that might be? )

[sunmon]

[ he's sufficiently scared her. alina doesn't have a comeback for that. she sets the device aside instead, rubbing a hand over her mouth like a troubled victorian grandmother. ]

[morozova]

I wonder what frightens you more: that I let you believe I wanted you or that I might've meant it.

[sunmon]

You never would have remembered the name Alina Starkov if you'd met me and I weren't the sun summoner.
What you want has nothing to do with me.

[morozova]

I saw your face in the making at he heart of the world the day the Fold was born, Alina Starkov.
I would know you anywhere.

[sunmon]

[ she shivers because she does believe him. because he has come for her and dragged her, powerless, out of the people zoo. anything she says about him only wanting her power is a deliberate obfuscation of that fact, which sticks out like a thorn in her mind.

so no. she can't, with any defensible argument, deny his wanting. that leaves her with the worse outcome. they do want each other, honestly, and succumbing to that would make monsters of them both. she thinks of the shadows where baghra's eyes had been, the insistence that alina had been the one to drive her son beyond redemption.

and then she looks at the photograph. at the scar, and the way that the dark lines of merzost creep away from it. ]

Maybe that's worse.