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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.

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.

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

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

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

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

You can't use the Fold without me.

There is no Fold, here.

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

[ 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. ]

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

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.

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.

[ 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.

Why didn't you kill me, Alina?
You've had every opportunity.

I thought the Fold would do it for me.

That's surprisingly sentimental of you.

How do you figure?

I don't think you'd like my answer.

I never like your answers.

How very true.
But I suspect you also don't need me to tell you why you would rather have left me for dead than doing the deed yourself.
It's certainly because you doubt your ability. I might've believed that once, but not now.

What makes you think I wasn't trying to kill you in Venia?

Because you'd have had to look me in the eye to do it, and I don't think you hate me quite that much.
Much as you wish you did.

It is impossible to overstate how much I hate you.

[ the problem, rather, is that it's not the only feeling there. ]

But not enough to kill me yourself.

( which might not be "aleksander and alina sitting in a tree" levels of gleeful, but that's only because this is a text and she can't see the look on his face right now. )

Give me time.

(no subject)

morozova - 2021-06-28 03:23 (UTC) - Expand