I'm not leaving you to your ghost. You won't ever leave me to mine.
[ She's raw in ways she's never been, now. No makeup. No armor. No humor. The Lady and the soldier, the operative and the socialite all peeled away. Flayed off like so much bloody skin leaving only the nerves of her exposed. Hair loose and wild. Dressed in fatigues far too large for her that had at one time belonged to Monet. Her eyes are rimmed with red, her skin sallow and bruised. Most of the callsigns have seen her undressed at some point or another in their tenure. But now is the only time Alpha might have seen her naked.
There are no tricks left to her. No tools, no weapons, no games. For the first time in her life she's gone somewhere potentially dangerous without any weapons. Just her hands. While she's been twisted, formed and forged into a weapon a million times over to a point where she is never truly unarmed- but she has no head for it tonight. Not with Monet lingering behind her eyes, bidding her remove the weak link. They can find another Alpha. He can be replaced. Every last one of them can be replaced and her hands go tight in the air. Tense talons fit to carve and gouge with her bare nails and it is nothing she hasn't done a thousand times before-
But not to him. He's not theirs. He's hers. And she has the blood of enough of her friends dripping from her palms and her lips to be glut of it- sick of the tang and the bitterness in her throat and in her heart. ]
She had you. She used you. She left you. She chose you because you were convenient. You could have been any man from district one. You could have been anyone and she'd have loved, used, and wasted them just the same.
[ It's- frustrating. Difficult to cut the words from behind her teeth, to wrench them free like shards of bone from a break that needs setting. But she spits them out, raw and low as she stalks forward. ]
You aren't hers anymore. You aren't theirs. I saw you. I knew you. I chose you. For yourself. For your skills. For your temperament.
[ Word by word, step by step until she's before him, hand snapping out to curl tight in his shirt over his chest. She has no weapons now. Only her words. Only her heart. ]
Mine. I chose you, and you are mine. Not hers. You know me, and I am yours. Not his. They're dead. They're gone. They're lost and we were RIGHT to lose them. They held us and broke us and never deserved a shard of us. We are broken. But we fit. Like this- [ She tugs his hand up to her chest, over her heart. ] We fit.
Edited (wtf is 'wed' that is not a color) 2014-10-16 09:15 (UTC)
[ He just. He doesn't know what to do with that. She's right, he wouldn't, but it wasn't as though it was out of a sense of expectant reciprocation. In all honesty if you'd asked him all the way from before this moment, actually up to and slightly beyond it, he would say that he preferred it so, that she indeed leave him to it, and that if him helping her handle her own demons meant that she would appear to aid him with his own in return, well, he would be somewhat less likely to show himself in the first place.
(Utter lies, but Athos does know how to wield words when he cares to. The simple matter is that more often than not he just can't be bothered to. He finds them base on his tongue and acidic in his thoughts, and while normally he can quite appreciate things that balance both - because alcohol and water are so vital for a healthy mind and body - the circumstance just doesn't always translate.)
It's still Alpha, barely - or is, again, right now it's hard to tell the order - who observes her come towards him as he stands next to the counter. He's thinking, over-thinking, and it is in that state that he notices her own; the lack of any pretense, any cover or disguise is... almost jarring, if he hadn't already felt somehow that he understood, improbably, the person beneath. By this point she's taken on so many facets, so many veneers and colours and shapes that she is so many layers and layers of paint over an original canvas, the initial work impossible to discern through the thick and hardened shells. Possible to get to, with a sharp knife and a lot of time, but then what? All you have is a different picture, and what's more a sudden strong disinclination to mar what you've found. Who knows if the picture even remembers what it used to be of, sometimes, or wants to?
It's less and less Alpha that is listening to her as she comes closer still though, her words sharp and cutting into the relative silence and settling like stones in the pit of his stomach. He's not sure that's helping, actually - true though it all may be, sometimes it's easier to think that some of it was real. It certainly makes some of it make more sense - and he's never really understood the whole thing anyway. There have been too many versions of the same story now, and he was too close to it at the time, he barely even remembers what his own original thoughts were on the matter. So much else has happened since then. But it's just as helpful other times to take that distance, to pull himself out of the equation. Things make less sense, sure, but the cut of them immediately feels so much less.
Limbo's never a comfortable state to be in. It isn't often you find a man who is willing to accept the grey mists and silver shadows as his emotional and intellectual homestead and stay there.
It's Athos, definitely, by the time she has her fist in his shirt, and it might have been Olivier actually if he hadn't definitively gone with Anne and Thomas so long ago. It's Athos and the mantle that brings with it the way it's Juliett and her own conveniences pulling his hand up to her own heart in turn. He looks down at it as she says her final two words, feels the warmth and rhythm of her even while her own hand's pressure against himself makes him more aware of his own.
(He's never been very good at this kind of speech. He doesn't know how to act with words, just frame his actions for those who needed their introduction to follow the plot.)
She's a bit warm from her exertion on the way here - through the window, every time - and he's the same from a combination of his own and alcohol - and both of their hearts are going too quickly, and neither of them is who they started as or ever truly set out to be, and both of them are being haunted by a former lover, and neither of them knows how to handle it.
And Athos has no idea what to say. Instead he focuses on the heartbeats, tries to see if he can match his own to hers somehow, because that makes perfect sense and it's not about romance, it's about feeling level. Nothing about his face is particularly soft when he glances up at her eyes - just for a moment - but in that moment there's at least a lack of anything harsh. ] Different forms of possession, mind, body, and soul. I suppose it's not always a bad thing. [ He tilts his head a bit, looking at her hand where it's still for the moment helping to keep his own in place. ] Couldn't be.
"She's gone. She left because she didn't know what she had. Monet died because that's what happens to us when we're ground down to nothing." What will inevitably happen to her but that, that all washes away in favor of breathing as Athos breathes. Heartbeat for heartbeat, breath for breath, pulses racing along because of- what? Running here as fast as possible so he wouldn't hurt anyone? Hurt himself? He wouldn't. That's not the issue. They aren't a danger to themselves- well. He isn't. She is. She's always been one. Too curious, too clever, too observant and none of that roils around quite so much as it does with him.
Every inch she grants him feels sharp and ragged as an exposed wound ground in salt. Every shade she watches flick behind his eyes grinds at something like bone because it's not something she's put there. It's something Anne granted, Anne twisted, Anne took and now, even like this? Anne has some hold of him.
They were married. They were in love. It fits that he hears her. It doesn't that this burns in no small way.
He's hers but not in that way. She's his in much the same but this pains him and- no one is allowed to hurt him without her say so. And she didn't allow the ghost of a woman to cut into him so deeply. "She doesn't get to have you anymore."
i still read that as 'substitute prose' not 'surprise prose' even though it was a surprise to see it
He doesn't actually know that for sure, and unless Juliett's been holding back on him neither does she. He still has no idea if she picked him because she loved him, or if it was something more likely like his connections or his money, or even less likely like his manner. Of the lot of them, he's always thought that the penultimate reason would be the easiest to hear. But there's no reason, and that's not the only thing he doesn't know. He doesn't know for sure why she killed Thomas, has never known whether he should mourn that loss or if the story she told him was true and he should have been angered that Thomas hadn't been who Athos thought he was.
Five years later and all he knows is that she died five years ago. People tell you how to finish the steps, move on from loss, move on past anger, move away from grief, move beyond the vengeance - there just isn't that much advice for getting around a life-changing unknown. At least, nothing that he's ever heard to help.
Nice of her to say it though. He's not sure how much of this he's ever actually told her, but it wouldn't necessarily surprise him no matter how much of it she knows despite that, whether it's effectively all or about the average for most people who were alive when it hit the dome's headlines. He doesn't respond - which is selfish, because she's having problems too, but he has no idea how to help her and he's not sure she wants it right now anyway, she already looks rough and exposed as it is. That's not going to stop him giving it once he figures out how to though. But for the moment he just keeps his breathing with hers, keeps as many of those doubts behind his expression and out of the air as he can. He's fairly good with masks, always has been, (which is probably why people tended to gravitate towards his younger brother) but right now he is compromised, much in the same way as her. She didn't have to run here though - his self-destruction takes a far less direct or isolated path. It wouldn't have been tonight, alone, for no reason. It would be later, in crisis, putting too much of himself into a purpose to possibly come back from it intact.
Athos' laugh is an exhalation of air, hollow in sound and all the more for the age of difference between what it is and what it should be and what it is for at this moment. "Would you like to let her know? Would yours just listen like that?"
"They're gone. They left." That, that is the sticking point. That they were taken, cherished or not, twisted around and hammered into something else for the benefit of someone that wouldn't be there to see what it made of them. To watch where the folds of steel meld and break, where the forge didn't temper evenly. How they were honed on too rough an edge to withstand a the force of each cut they've had to make over the years. In dire need of tempering, but who cares enough to reforge them? No one. They were made to cut and twist and fight till the bitter, jagged shards of them were all that left on the hilt. Not to mend. Not to fix each other.
The ones that made them are gone. Even with these lingering whispers, these screams of the dead hounding them day in, day out- even if it's no different than the casual slide of Monet's voice in her mind on any other day this is false. This isn't his voice. Isn't his advice, his affection, his warnings. And he'd been truly loving. Anne? Never. She cannot imagine what it is that voice is dragging through Athos' mind.
"I am not going to crack open your skull to tell her." That's what it would take- and she could. Easily. But that isn't what she wants. There's blood enough on her hands without adding his. "Monet is dead. Monet can fuck off. Anne can fuck off. You are not hers. You're mine."
Like a dragon's gold, like a cyanide pill and a suicide pact and she doesn't have the words to explain it. Actions always speak louder.
Her lips peel back from her teeth in a snarl as her hand fists in his shirt and she pulls him down. It's like a battle. A bite. A fresh bruise. The dull ache of their mouths crashing together in something that is and isn't sexual, is and isn't loving. It's not tender or gentle because neither of them ARE tender or gentle. They do not need that from each other. Forged steel sparks when struck. Perhaps they can burn hot enough to lose the ghosts for some time.
She says that they're gone, he can hear her just fine, and then almost as if in response - no, of course it's in response, it's Anne, it's in response. She says 'They're gone. They left.' and he hears Anne's light laughter, the kind that he used to hear when she was down the hallway looking at some thing she'd found, or chatting with some person she may or may not have liked but she knew well enough to know that it wasn't a bad thing to be nice on occasion. It was the sort of laugh that had always called to him, to make him come and seek her out.
(He wondered, in the months afterward, watching vids and holos if it wasn't like that on purpose; whether or not she was having him find her happy, amused, entertained, by those around her, and calling him in to see, or calling him in just to see if she could do it, to manipulate one person who wasn't even in the room at the time effort and seamlessly while she was doing the same to those who were already there. He wondered if she learned from him, or if he was just simply so easy that it was a relaxing break when she came home. He wondered all of that then, and what he has right now is a voice that drips with mimicry, a saccharine 'Yes, my love,' in affirmation, and it's not real but the rest of it was and he just...
He just can't tell. )
Athos has been looking off into indeterminate space for some time now, and this isn't likely to change even as he registers that Juliett has begun speaking again - and thank god, because even though having her voice outside and Anne's voice inside and Anne's voice responding to her inside and his own, quietly, asking her to stop just for a little while; it's all getting a little cacophonous. He closes his eyes so he can hear better and he doesn't tense, he deliberately doesn't tense - which has the approximate effect of making him more or less go a little rigid, which totally isn't the same as tense, and he's listening to Juliett, yes, Monet is dead, Athos is okay with this, 'Anne can fuck off' and wow she's so mad and he squeezes his eyes and bites his lip just a little because she doesn't feel like she's dead like she's supposed to be - what? no, dead like she is, except not right now, because she's here and he has her, and he doesn't know what to do to keep it all in his head and it's just --
Someone - he has his eyes closed and to be honest right now he's not quite himself but he's still subconsciously pretty sure it's Juliett has yanked him down to her by his shirt and slammed their mouths together and for about one-point-eight seconds he freezes, he has no idea, and it's silent in his head, everything's quiet. Juliett is kissing him, and it's
He takes the free hand he'd had this whole time and puts it on her head, her cheek, her neck, wherever she wants it, and the one on her heart he keeps trapped between them as he continues to kiss her back.
Edited (] stoopid bracket howd' u get thur) 2014-10-22 09:06 (UTC)
It's quiet in her head for the first time in days. No Monet. No fragments of memories rewritten. No lingering scent of Keith's cologne or rough scrape of his laughter like a raw wound. None of her ghosts. Just her lips on his, her hands tangled in his shirt, their mingling breath in the stillness of the room under the thundering of their bruised hearts. It's safe kind of brutal poetry and for a moment there is that question of honest desire- or is this just one other way that her handlers are attempting to control her? Someone as broken as she is holds some appeal. Someone that would provoke empathy.
Jealousy. Affection. Loyalty.
Deadly sins them all. There is no place for such things in an operative. Not part of the game as she was taught. There are rules unwritten that need to be followed. No sentiment. No honesty. No loyalty other than to herself. Monet had been quite clear in his instructions, precise to the point of pain. As kind and tender as he'd ever been she could never tell if he was sincere.
That would be telling, Dellie. You'll know when you need to. You always know when you need to.
He'd almost told her once, she thinks. The words thick on his tongue like honey and bile. Quickly swallowed back and lingering long after the urge passes. Hand in hers he'd smiled so sadly. Said goodnight like it was goodbye, and it was. Come the morning there was a body and an encrypted message and neither were honest. Neither were true. He'd taught her and told her everything save what she needed to know and hear most.
She'll be damned if she'll do the same to Athos. She pulls him away from the wall she'd backed him against and to the nearest chair, shoving him down for a moment to breathe. The whole of her shudders with the force of it, ugly, panting breaths like a body in shock. "You're mine. My leader. My general. My demon. My family."
Without another word she drops into his lap, drowning out monet condemning this with warmth and contact and him. "My albatross."
For that if nothing else, she won't kill him. Ever.
Forehead to forehead she tries to steady get breathing. "He's dead. I know he's dead I woke up with him hanging in the next room and when you're close he's so loud it's like I can feel him breathing again."
And it hurts. Cuts to have him disappointed in her, he'd trained her so well. Every off handed remark a dagger and simply knowing he was manipulating her didn't make it easier to ignore or to bear.
"Tell him to be quiet. I can't think for his screaming." One breath, another, her hands curl right in his hair. "He'll listen to you, we always listen to Alpha."
He barely registers when his back hits the wall, all but attempting to pour himself into her or perhaps just become one with each other in an attempt to at least have voices in their heads that they don't mind being there quite so much. He's basically trying to separate from his body, because she's in there right now so it stands to reason that if he can leave it, then it'll be okay. She might have his body, but then his mind will be out here and that would be fine too. He could live with that, just, being.
(Except, Athos, that's death. And you can't live with death. You are not a cat, you are not Schrödinger.)
The kiss is hard, almost brutal and he can't tell who is attempting to claim whom or if that's even what's happening here. Maybe the idea is to kiss the other senseless, to drown out the voices in their heads with endorphins and dopamine and adrenaline and the pounding of their hearts and the rush of their blood and the loudness of their breaths as the pull apart for precious, precious air.
She's shoved him down into a chair that four seconds ago he wouldn't even have been able to tell you existed at all, and it's all they can both do for a few moments is breathe. She's talking again - you'd think it would sound quieter, with all the heavy breathing they're trying so hard to keep under control - but it's loud and crisp and he can hear it just fine. So it was her doing the claiming. He's perfectly fine with that, in all honesty. He doesn't think about it as being a role he played before and well, because this is different.
And suddenly she's in his lap and she had to know she'd feel something if she did that - she proved not too long ago even that she's a fantastic kisser - but all he does is grab her and steady her and praise whatever power exists that he gets to have her this close again, because closeness apparently keeps their demons quiet.
(And don't think he'll forget that you called him your demon, your albatross. Those have interesting connotations too.)
But she leans against him and he moves his hands from her thighs, her knees, around her hips to her back, pulls her in with just the weight of them (such as it is.) Their breath mingles, breathing in and out each others' air, and her hands in his hair again are appreciated, do nothing for the lap thing, but she's asking him for help and he's never been able to say no. He can only say no to certain people, certain situations anyway, but to her, even when those times have occurred, he couldn't.
"He'd better. Don't know what he's thinking, screaming in your head like that when it's me who holds all the history. Who holds you now, because he's not here, he doesn't get to be. Not getting what he wants doesn't give him a free pass so he can shut the fuck up immediately." Maybe a little more than the weight of his arms. Alpha's never been bulky, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have some strength. It's just hard to tell where it's coming from.
When he continues, it's a little softer, and he's mostly looking down, partly for reasons and partially because his nightvision seems to do something kind of weird when it looks right into other eyes like that this close or something. "I don't know if you're mine quite the way I'm yours, at this point. Or I'd say something about it. But you are mine in other ways, and I'll..." What. Words. Athos and words, sometimes he's so eloquent and then others, it's just, anxiety. And all of this very recent anxiety? Man. "You are. In those ways. And I'll keep you safe."
She feels. She feels everything and that's what makes Monet go quiet. The wash of Athos' breath, the rumble in his chest, how his arms are warm and real and there around her. Monet is dead. Monet is gone. Monet was screaming so loud she couldn't focus and this quiets him. All of him. All of them.
No more ghosts.
For a moment it's so silent she feels like she's died when he keeps on. Centers her. Anchors her. Holds her in place so she won't fly apart or float away. More than his hands his voice seeps in through every jagged crack left behind by Bifrons and Monet, seeping in sweet as syrup and thick as tar to smooth over the bits of her that make her bleed when she breathes. Blunts them and braces them back in place. But that uncertainty- can she have that?
Can she have everything?
There's this constant uncertain undercurrent of want whenever she's around him. It's always been that way. Something in him that piques her interest. Maybe it's the ruin that Anne left him. Maybe it's wanting to find someone just as broken and try to fix them. Maybe it's just his too old eyes and his too soft hands and his all too rare smile. Maybe it's nothing and all of this but she wants, has wanted, but doesn't know if it's safe to want. If he wants back. If they can have instead of yearn. The simple answer is that it's never safe. It'll never be safe. And oh, he wants to keep her safe from Monet and that he can do.
But he can't protect her from herself.
She wants him. Like the axe wants the turkey, she wants him and for this moment it seems as though she and she alone has him. Not Anne. Not even the ghost of her.
There's a lingering thought of James, of Natalia, both slip aside as she pulls herself all the more close to him, pressing her lips along his pulse, along his jaw, against his mouth once more to silence that foolish promise. He can't save her from what will kill her. But he can make the idea of sticking around a little bit longer more appealing. He can remind her to be less of a weapon. This kiss is gentler, sweeter. Kinder.
Less like a fight and more like an invitation. She even goes so far as to take one of his hands and slide it down to rest on her hip again, pulling back to catch his eyes as she rolls against that stiffness she'd caused earlier. "I can be yours however you want me- for tonight."
Just tonight. She can't be certain of anything more.
they are a lot of things but 'sweet' isn't typically one of the first adjectives that comes to mind
Athos supposes that after what he said - and immediately after saying it he'd decided that it was really just, such a stupid thing to say, because he's tried to protect people before and if nothing else history has shown him to some exponential power that he's only good at it when they aren't people he's invested in personally - he should have expected a reaction like that. Something softer, since that's what people do, right? People are soft with the ones who they care about.
They're also softer with people who are broken, or people they think can't handle things properly, which isn't exactly the same thing but comes close enough, and it's interesting sometimes to consider that we treat those we love the most the same as we treat innocents and the mentally incapable. Gentleness isn't a response often given to the strong, to the point where it tends to take them the most off-guard of them all.
He thinks too much. He almost preferred the almost-violence of what they were doing before, if only because it afforded less of a chance, not that he couldn't still rise to the occasion.
"I didn't-" mean it like that. Not specifically, anyway, even if he can't particularly argue he's entirely opposed to the idea. There's been quite an odd sort of reaction between them for a while now, one that at some point he just decided to stop attempting to figure out, because people have never really been his strong suit and the ones like her, the ones who have learned to shift and become what they feel like for however long or short a time they wish to, well they're all the more difficult to pin down. He doesn't enjoy the almost inevitable comparison to Anne that some of Juliett's traits draw, but he's not unaware of them. They're not all bad - he did, does, love Anne in the first place, albeit in a very different way than he does Juliett. Still, they're unfair comparisons to begin with.
He's not actually sure he likes having this decision. He wants to, right now he definitely wants to, but. It's worrying on some level. But what's the alternative? Hearing dead lovers haunt them in their thoughts? That tends to go poorly even for well-adjusted people, and if he was thinking too much before, he definitely is now, expression not worried precisely but far less certain than usual.
So in light of that expression it's probably not that surprising that he finally breaks eye contact, looks somewhere over her shoulder instead and gives more or less a non-answer. It's okay, it annoys him too. "Probably a good idea. Not any more than tonight, anyway."
"You don't." There's wanting, wanting, and wanting. They're...caught somewhere in between the second and third. More than an urge, less than a need. A low burning thing full of embers and potential that Athos, at least, seems reluctant to stir.
Seeing as normally he's the more sane of them? It's probably best to follow his gut and not. Maybe another time but- she makes no move to leave his lap. While nothing more may come to pass this is...the closeness helps to quiet her ghosts. And while it feels a little lie abandonment when he looks away, a little like lying when he won't give a straight answer she can't truly begrudge him the confusion.
No.
Scratch that.
She can. She has ever been nothing but forthright with him in her own strange way. That he would dodge something so direct as this for the sake of...what? Pride? Propriety? Her feelings? Yes or no. That's what she needs now more than the closeness. Ambiguity in consent is problematic on so many levels and she's never stood for it in the past. She'll not stand for it now.
"Oliver." She'd promised to never, but here she is, one hand curling in his hair to tug his face back so they're eye to eye again. "Yes or no. No is fine. I'll get up, order dinner, and we'll watch something terrible on the network. But you need to be clear. My whole existence is vague insinuation and nuanced, nebulous orders, inferred affection and multiple layers of meaning I had to put up with from Monet. I do not need that here with you."
He just. For someone who feels things quite as deeply as he does sometimes he's remarkably ill-equipped to handle strong emotions and hoo boy right now emotions are running very high and fast and tight. As much as he wants, and wants her, and wants to feel close like that, open like that, vaguely safe like that again with someone, he's just...
If they do it now it's not them sticking it to Monet and Anne, is it? It's them both running from them; it's both he and her allowing themselves to be twisted and torn up by their ex lovers once again and he'd just, he'd rather it not be like that. But maybe it isn't already? Maybe that's not what it would be, maybe it would just be what it is, and maybe he's overthinking it like he overthinks so many other things already. He's been doing it constantly since he first realised she was talking to it, doing it just shy of constantly before that for other less obsessive reasons, and he's evasive now because he can't make up his mind even when literally given a this or that question and Juliett's right to seem dissatisfied with that, he thinks in the split second before she says his name and jerks him right out of those thoughts too.
Olivier, and she barely needed her hand to tug him back to face her because his eyes were seeking hers out already, and they're open and he's still not sure. He stares while he considers this, and then retroactively her explanation hits, and he realises she wants to not be guessing. She wants clarity, and even though he's typically not particularly great at that, he can try. "I want to. We've had -- whatever this is, for a while. I've thought about it. I just don't know if - if it would be because of them or just in spite. I'm just tired of feeling controlled. By them, by... This, I don't know. Everything. To stop thinking." And now he's just doing that aloud, really, which actually isn't what she asked for, might in fact be the opposite of what she asked for to be honest, and he reins it back in. It's a yes or no question, Athos - Olivier, Alpha, whoever you are. Why it has to be his decision, he's not sure, since she's apparently fine with either option. This isn't his field, really. Clearly. "I don't want to order dinner. Or watch the network. That's not going to help." Actually that makes his skin itch and bones fidget beneath tendons alone, and his hands tighten both to stave off the phantom feeling of both of those and just to feel her beneath his palms. "You always help."
"No. No 'I want' or 'I don't want' or dancing around it. Simple question, simple answer." She draws him in like poison gas, breathing down every waft of uncertainty. Swallows it back and down while her fingers comb through his hair, tap against his topmost port. This needn't be complicated. They both have far, far too much of complication. "Yes or no."
Yes had been implied, certainly, with how he clung, how he spoke, how he looked at her- but no more implications. No more inferences. No more nuance. No more subtlety. No more fucking complications. Just.
She's making him be very specific and that is just so not his natural state. Decisive? Perhaps, but in certain situations. Actually no, specific isn't even incorrect either - he can be specific. He can be decisive, they're just. They're not what he defaults to - they're survival mechanisms.
That doesn't even make sense, but. Athos bends so far back on himself, thinks himself into corners and twists himself into knots, lets anxiety - occasionally - put a stone in his stomach and sink him to the bottom.
I'm stopping the poetry there, you get the gist.
But she wants - needs, actually, though, because he doesn't think she just wants this. Ever since he's known her he's not been too bad at understanding her and right now she's practically comprised of neon fucking signs. She needs clarity. She's not just asking or demanding it. So he gives it to her, finally. There is a sound from the back of his throat, deep in his chest, that she's never heard and he hasn't heard in a long time - not really a growl but the sort of sound that comes directly before a hard-won response. If that makes literally any sense at all.
"Yes." He pulls her closer towards himself, down against him, even while he turns his face up towards her enough to be close enough to her face for the breath and warmth of their words to register on each others' cheeks. She has her hands in his hair, her fingers at his ports, and he has his breath on her skin, her weight against his hardness. "Yes, I want you." Maybe against the wall here in a minute, maybe just however you want him - he's got preferences but. Well.
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[ She's raw in ways she's never been, now. No makeup. No armor. No humor. The Lady and the soldier, the operative and the socialite all peeled away. Flayed off like so much bloody skin leaving only the nerves of her exposed. Hair loose and wild. Dressed in fatigues far too large for her that had at one time belonged to Monet. Her eyes are rimmed with red, her skin sallow and bruised. Most of the callsigns have seen her undressed at some point or another in their tenure. But now is the only time Alpha might have seen her naked.
There are no tricks left to her. No tools, no weapons, no games. For the first time in her life she's gone somewhere potentially dangerous without any weapons. Just her hands. While she's been twisted, formed and forged into a weapon a million times over to a point where she is never truly unarmed- but she has no head for it tonight. Not with Monet lingering behind her eyes, bidding her remove the weak link. They can find another Alpha. He can be replaced. Every last one of them can be replaced and her hands go tight in the air. Tense talons fit to carve and gouge with her bare nails and it is nothing she hasn't done a thousand times before-
But not to him. He's not theirs. He's hers. And she has the blood of enough of her friends dripping from her palms and her lips to be glut of it- sick of the tang and the bitterness in her throat and in her heart. ]
She had you. She used you. She left you. She chose you because you were convenient. You could have been any man from district one. You could have been anyone and she'd have loved, used, and wasted them just the same.
[ It's- frustrating. Difficult to cut the words from behind her teeth, to wrench them free like shards of bone from a break that needs setting. But she spits them out, raw and low as she stalks forward. ]
You aren't hers anymore. You aren't theirs. I saw you. I knew you. I chose you. For yourself. For your skills. For your temperament.
[ Word by word, step by step until she's before him, hand snapping out to curl tight in his shirt over his chest. She has no weapons now. Only her words. Only her heart. ]
Mine. I chose you, and you are mine. Not hers. You know me, and I am yours. Not his. They're dead. They're gone. They're lost and we were RIGHT to lose them. They held us and broke us and never deserved a shard of us. We are broken. But we fit. Like this- [ She tugs his hand up to her chest, over her heart. ] We fit.
it's a cowour if yowre elmur fwudd thoow
(Utter lies, but Athos does know how to wield words when he cares to. The simple matter is that more often than not he just can't be bothered to. He finds them base on his tongue and acidic in his thoughts, and while normally he can quite appreciate things that balance both - because alcohol and water are so vital for a healthy mind and body - the circumstance just doesn't always translate.)
It's still Alpha, barely - or is, again, right now it's hard to tell the order - who observes her come towards him as he stands next to the counter. He's thinking, over-thinking, and it is in that state that he notices her own; the lack of any pretense, any cover or disguise is... almost jarring, if he hadn't already felt somehow that he understood, improbably, the person beneath. By this point she's taken on so many facets, so many veneers and colours and shapes that she is so many layers and layers of paint over an original canvas, the initial work impossible to discern through the thick and hardened shells. Possible to get to, with a sharp knife and a lot of time, but then what? All you have is a different picture, and what's more a sudden strong disinclination to mar what you've found. Who knows if the picture even remembers what it used to be of, sometimes, or wants to?
It's less and less Alpha that is listening to her as she comes closer still though, her words sharp and cutting into the relative silence and settling like stones in the pit of his stomach. He's not sure that's helping, actually - true though it all may be, sometimes it's easier to think that some of it was real. It certainly makes some of it make more sense - and he's never really understood the whole thing anyway. There have been too many versions of the same story now, and he was too close to it at the time, he barely even remembers what his own original thoughts were on the matter. So much else has happened since then. But it's just as helpful other times to take that distance, to pull himself out of the equation. Things make less sense, sure, but the cut of them immediately feels so much less.
Limbo's never a comfortable state to be in. It isn't often you find a man who is willing to accept the grey mists and silver shadows as his emotional and intellectual homestead and stay there.
It's Athos, definitely, by the time she has her fist in his shirt, and it might have been Olivier actually if he hadn't definitively gone with Anne and Thomas so long ago. It's Athos and the mantle that brings with it the way it's Juliett and her own conveniences pulling his hand up to her own heart in turn. He looks down at it as she says her final two words, feels the warmth and rhythm of her even while her own hand's pressure against himself makes him more aware of his own.
(He's never been very good at this kind of speech. He doesn't know how to act with words, just frame his actions for those who needed their introduction to follow the plot.)
She's a bit warm from her exertion on the way here - through the window, every time - and he's the same from a combination of his own and alcohol - and both of their hearts are going too quickly, and neither of them is who they started as or ever truly set out to be, and both of them are being haunted by a former lover, and neither of them knows how to handle it.
And Athos has no idea what to say. Instead he focuses on the heartbeats, tries to see if he can match his own to hers somehow, because that makes perfect sense and it's not about romance, it's about feeling level. Nothing about his face is particularly soft when he glances up at her eyes - just for a moment - but in that moment there's at least a lack of anything harsh. ] Different forms of possession, mind, body, and soul. I suppose it's not always a bad thing. [ He tilts his head a bit, looking at her hand where it's still for the moment helping to keep his own in place. ] Couldn't be.
EWEYTING IS IN FWENCH. ALSO: SUB PROSE
Every inch she grants him feels sharp and ragged as an exposed wound ground in salt. Every shade she watches flick behind his eyes grinds at something like bone because it's not something she's put there. It's something Anne granted, Anne twisted, Anne took and now, even like this? Anne has some hold of him.
They were married. They were in love. It fits that he hears her. It doesn't that this burns in no small way.
He's hers but not in that way. She's his in much the same but this pains him and- no one is allowed to hurt him without her say so. And she didn't allow the ghost of a woman to cut into him so deeply. "She doesn't get to have you anymore."
i still read that as 'substitute prose' not 'surprise prose' even though it was a surprise to see it
Five years later and all he knows is that she died five years ago. People tell you how to finish the steps, move on from loss, move on past anger, move away from grief, move beyond the vengeance - there just isn't that much advice for getting around a life-changing unknown. At least, nothing that he's ever heard to help.
Nice of her to say it though. He's not sure how much of this he's ever actually told her, but it wouldn't necessarily surprise him no matter how much of it she knows despite that, whether it's effectively all or about the average for most people who were alive when it hit the dome's headlines. He doesn't respond - which is selfish, because she's having problems too, but he has no idea how to help her and he's not sure she wants it right now anyway, she already looks rough and exposed as it is. That's not going to stop him giving it once he figures out how to though. But for the moment he just keeps his breathing with hers, keeps as many of those doubts behind his expression and out of the air as he can. He's fairly good with masks, always has been, (which is probably why people tended to gravitate towards his younger brother) but right now he is compromised, much in the same way as her. She didn't have to run here though - his self-destruction takes a far less direct or isolated path. It wouldn't have been tonight, alone, for no reason. It would be later, in crisis, putting too much of himself into a purpose to possibly come back from it intact.
Athos' laugh is an exhalation of air, hollow in sound and all the more for the age of difference between what it is and what it should be and what it is for at this moment. "Would you like to let her know? Would yours just listen like that?"
Suprose?
The ones that made them are gone. Even with these lingering whispers, these screams of the dead hounding them day in, day out- even if it's no different than the casual slide of Monet's voice in her mind on any other day this is false. This isn't his voice. Isn't his advice, his affection, his warnings. And he'd been truly loving. Anne? Never. She cannot imagine what it is that voice is dragging through Athos' mind.
"I am not going to crack open your skull to tell her." That's what it would take- and she could. Easily. But that isn't what she wants. There's blood enough on her hands without adding his. "Monet is dead. Monet can fuck off. Anne can fuck off. You are not hers. You're mine."
Like a dragon's gold, like a cyanide pill and a suicide pact and she doesn't have the words to explain it. Actions always speak louder.
Her lips peel back from her teeth in a snarl as her hand fists in his shirt and she pulls him down. It's like a battle. A bite. A fresh bruise. The dull ache of their mouths crashing together in something that is and isn't sexual, is and isn't loving. It's not tender or gentle because neither of them ARE tender or gentle. They do not need that from each other. Forged steel sparks when struck. Perhaps they can burn hot enough to lose the ghosts for some time.
now it sounds like 'sucrose'
(He wondered, in the months afterward, watching vids and holos if it wasn't like that on purpose; whether or not she was having him find her happy, amused, entertained, by those around her, and calling him in to see, or calling him in just to see if she could do it, to manipulate one person who wasn't even in the room at the time effort and seamlessly while she was doing the same to those who were already there. He wondered if she learned from him, or if he was just simply so easy that it was a relaxing break when she came home. He wondered all of that then, and what he has right now is a voice that drips with mimicry, a saccharine 'Yes, my love,' in affirmation, and it's not real but the rest of it was and he just...
He just can't tell. )
Athos has been looking off into indeterminate space for some time now, and this isn't likely to change even as he registers that Juliett has begun speaking again - and thank god, because even though having her voice outside and Anne's voice inside and Anne's voice responding to her inside and his own, quietly, asking her to stop just for a little while; it's all getting a little cacophonous. He closes his eyes so he can hear better and he doesn't tense, he deliberately doesn't tense - which has the approximate effect of making him more or less go a little rigid, which totally isn't the same as tense, and he's listening to Juliett, yes, Monet is dead, Athos is okay with this, 'Anne can fuck off' and wow she's so mad and he squeezes his eyes and bites his lip just a little because she doesn't feel like she's dead like she's supposed to be - what? no, dead like she is, except not right now, because she's here and he has her, and he doesn't know what to do to keep it all in his head and it's just --
Someone - he has his eyes closed and to be honest right now he's not quite himself but he's still subconsciously pretty sure it's Juliett has yanked him down to her by his shirt and slammed their mouths together and for about one-point-eight seconds he freezes, he has no idea, and it's silent in his head, everything's quiet. Juliett is kissing him, and it's
He takes the free hand he'd had this whole time and puts it on her head, her cheek, her neck, wherever she wants it, and the one on her heart he keeps trapped between them as he continues to kiss her back.
well they are sweet.
Jealousy. Affection. Loyalty.
Deadly sins them all. There is no place for such things in an operative. Not part of the game as she was taught. There are rules unwritten that need to be followed. No sentiment. No honesty. No loyalty other than to herself. Monet had been quite clear in his instructions, precise to the point of pain. As kind and tender as he'd ever been she could never tell if he was sincere.
That would be telling, Dellie. You'll know when you need to. You always know when you need to.
He'd almost told her once, she thinks. The words thick on his tongue like honey and bile. Quickly swallowed back and lingering long after the urge passes. Hand in hers he'd smiled so sadly. Said goodnight like it was goodbye, and it was. Come the morning there was a body and an encrypted message and neither were honest. Neither were true. He'd taught her and told her everything save what she needed to know and hear most.
She'll be damned if she'll do the same to Athos. She pulls him away from the wall she'd backed him against and to the nearest chair, shoving him down for a moment to breathe. The whole of her shudders with the force of it, ugly, panting breaths like a body in shock. "You're mine. My leader. My general. My demon. My family."
Without another word she drops into his lap, drowning out monet condemning this with warmth and contact and him. "My albatross."
For that if nothing else, she won't kill him. Ever.
Forehead to forehead she tries to steady get breathing. "He's dead. I know he's dead I woke up with him hanging in the next room and when you're close he's so loud it's like I can feel him breathing again."
And it hurts. Cuts to have him disappointed in her, he'd trained her so well. Every off handed remark a dagger and simply knowing he was manipulating her didn't make it easier to ignore or to bear.
"Tell him to be quiet. I can't think for his screaming." One breath, another, her hands curl right in his hair. "He'll listen to you, we always listen to Alpha."
now it sounds like 'sucrose'
(Except, Athos, that's death. And you can't live with death. You are not a cat, you are not Schrödinger.)
The kiss is hard, almost brutal and he can't tell who is attempting to claim whom or if that's even what's happening here. Maybe the idea is to kiss the other senseless, to drown out the voices in their heads with endorphins and dopamine and adrenaline and the pounding of their hearts and the rush of their blood and the loudness of their breaths as the pull apart for precious, precious air.
She's shoved him down into a chair that four seconds ago he wouldn't even have been able to tell you existed at all, and it's all they can both do for a few moments is breathe. She's talking again - you'd think it would sound quieter, with all the heavy breathing they're trying so hard to keep under control - but it's loud and crisp and he can hear it just fine. So it was her doing the claiming. He's perfectly fine with that, in all honesty. He doesn't think about it as being a role he played before and well, because this is different.
And suddenly she's in his lap and she had to know she'd feel something if she did that - she proved not too long ago even that she's a fantastic kisser - but all he does is grab her and steady her and praise whatever power exists that he gets to have her this close again, because closeness apparently keeps their demons quiet.
(And don't think he'll forget that you called him your demon, your albatross. Those have interesting connotations too.)
But she leans against him and he moves his hands from her thighs, her knees, around her hips to her back, pulls her in with just the weight of them (such as it is.) Their breath mingles, breathing in and out each others' air, and her hands in his hair again are appreciated, do nothing for the lap thing, but she's asking him for help and he's never been able to say no. He can only say no to certain people, certain situations anyway, but to her, even when those times have occurred, he couldn't.
"He'd better. Don't know what he's thinking, screaming in your head like that when it's me who holds all the history. Who holds you now, because he's not here, he doesn't get to be. Not getting what he wants doesn't give him a free pass so he can shut the fuck up immediately." Maybe a little more than the weight of his arms. Alpha's never been bulky, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have some strength. It's just hard to tell where it's coming from.
When he continues, it's a little softer, and he's mostly looking down, partly for reasons and partially because his nightvision seems to do something kind of weird when it looks right into other eyes like that this close or something. "I don't know if you're mine quite the way I'm yours, at this point. Or I'd say something about it. But you are mine in other ways, and I'll..." What. Words. Athos and words, sometimes he's so eloquent and then others, it's just, anxiety. And all of this very recent anxiety? Man. "You are. In those ways. And I'll keep you safe."
well they are sweet
No more ghosts.
For a moment it's so silent she feels like she's died when he keeps on. Centers her. Anchors her. Holds her in place so she won't fly apart or float away. More than his hands his voice seeps in through every jagged crack left behind by Bifrons and Monet, seeping in sweet as syrup and thick as tar to smooth over the bits of her that make her bleed when she breathes. Blunts them and braces them back in place. But that uncertainty- can she have that?
Can she have everything?
There's this constant uncertain undercurrent of want whenever she's around him. It's always been that way. Something in him that piques her interest. Maybe it's the ruin that Anne left him. Maybe it's wanting to find someone just as broken and try to fix them. Maybe it's just his too old eyes and his too soft hands and his all too rare smile. Maybe it's nothing and all of this but she wants, has wanted, but doesn't know if it's safe to want. If he wants back. If they can have instead of yearn. The simple answer is that it's never safe. It'll never be safe. And oh, he wants to keep her safe from Monet and that he can do.
But he can't protect her from herself.
She wants him. Like the axe wants the turkey, she wants him and for this moment it seems as though she and she alone has him. Not Anne. Not even the ghost of her.
There's a lingering thought of James, of Natalia, both slip aside as she pulls herself all the more close to him, pressing her lips along his pulse, along his jaw, against his mouth once more to silence that foolish promise. He can't save her from what will kill her. But he can make the idea of sticking around a little bit longer more appealing. He can remind her to be less of a weapon. This kiss is gentler, sweeter. Kinder.
Less like a fight and more like an invitation. She even goes so far as to take one of his hands and slide it down to rest on her hip again, pulling back to catch his eyes as she rolls against that stiffness she'd caused earlier. "I can be yours however you want me- for tonight."
Just tonight. She can't be certain of anything more.
they are a lot of things but 'sweet' isn't typically one of the first adjectives that comes to mind
They're also softer with people who are broken, or people they think can't handle things properly, which isn't exactly the same thing but comes close enough, and it's interesting sometimes to consider that we treat those we love the most the same as we treat innocents and the mentally incapable. Gentleness isn't a response often given to the strong, to the point where it tends to take them the most off-guard of them all.
He thinks too much. He almost preferred the almost-violence of what they were doing before, if only because it afforded less of a chance, not that he couldn't still rise to the occasion.
"I didn't-" mean it like that. Not specifically, anyway, even if he can't particularly argue he's entirely opposed to the idea. There's been quite an odd sort of reaction between them for a while now, one that at some point he just decided to stop attempting to figure out, because people have never really been his strong suit and the ones like her, the ones who have learned to shift and become what they feel like for however long or short a time they wish to, well they're all the more difficult to pin down. He doesn't enjoy the almost inevitable comparison to Anne that some of Juliett's traits draw, but he's not unaware of them. They're not all bad - he did, does, love Anne in the first place, albeit in a very different way than he does Juliett. Still, they're unfair comparisons to begin with.
He's not actually sure he likes having this decision. He wants to, right now he definitely wants to, but. It's worrying on some level. But what's the alternative? Hearing dead lovers haunt them in their thoughts? That tends to go poorly even for well-adjusted people, and if he was thinking too much before, he definitely is now, expression not worried precisely but far less certain than usual.
So in light of that expression it's probably not that surprising that he finally breaks eye contact, looks somewhere over her shoulder instead and gives more or less a non-answer. It's okay, it annoys him too. "Probably a good idea. Not any more than tonight, anyway."
bittersweet
Seeing as normally he's the more sane of them? It's probably best to follow his gut and not. Maybe another time but- she makes no move to leave his lap. While nothing more may come to pass this is...the closeness helps to quiet her ghosts. And while it feels a little lie abandonment when he looks away, a little like lying when he won't give a straight answer she can't truly begrudge him the confusion.
No.
Scratch that.
She can. She has ever been nothing but forthright with him in her own strange way. That he would dodge something so direct as this for the sake of...what? Pride? Propriety? Her feelings? Yes or no. That's what she needs now more than the closeness. Ambiguity in consent is problematic on so many levels and she's never stood for it in the past. She'll not stand for it now.
"Oliver." She'd promised to never, but here she is, one hand curling in his hair to tug his face back so they're eye to eye again. "Yes or no. No is fine. I'll get up, order dinner, and we'll watch something terrible on the network. But you need to be clear. My whole existence is vague insinuation and nuanced, nebulous orders, inferred affection and multiple layers of meaning I had to put up with from Monet. I do not need that here with you."
ah yes that one there we go
If they do it now it's not them sticking it to Monet and Anne, is it? It's them both running from them; it's both he and her allowing themselves to be twisted and torn up by their ex lovers once again and he'd just, he'd rather it not be like that. But maybe it isn't already? Maybe that's not what it would be, maybe it would just be what it is, and maybe he's overthinking it like he overthinks so many other things already. He's been doing it constantly since he first realised she was talking to it, doing it just shy of constantly before that for other less obsessive reasons, and he's evasive now because he can't make up his mind even when literally given a this or that question and Juliett's right to seem dissatisfied with that, he thinks in the split second before she says his name and jerks him right out of those thoughts too.
Olivier, and she barely needed her hand to tug him back to face her because his eyes were seeking hers out already, and they're open and he's still not sure. He stares while he considers this, and then retroactively her explanation hits, and he realises she wants to not be guessing. She wants clarity, and even though he's typically not particularly great at that, he can try. "I want to. We've had -- whatever this is, for a while. I've thought about it. I just don't know if - if it would be because of them or just in spite. I'm just tired of feeling controlled. By them, by... This, I don't know. Everything. To stop thinking." And now he's just doing that aloud, really, which actually isn't what she asked for, might in fact be the opposite of what she asked for to be honest, and he reins it back in. It's a yes or no question, Athos - Olivier, Alpha, whoever you are. Why it has to be his decision, he's not sure, since she's apparently fine with either option. This isn't his field, really. Clearly. "I don't want to order dinner. Or watch the network. That's not going to help." Actually that makes his skin itch and bones fidget beneath tendons alone, and his hands tighten both to stave off the phantom feeling of both of those and just to feel her beneath his palms. "You always help."
I thought so
Yes had been implied, certainly, with how he clung, how he spoke, how he looked at her- but no more implications. No more inferences. No more nuance. No more subtlety. No more fucking complications. Just.
Yes or no.
There is nothing in the world more simple.
u always kno best
That doesn't even make sense, but. Athos bends so far back on himself, thinks himself into corners and twists himself into knots, lets anxiety - occasionally - put a stone in his stomach and sink him to the bottom.
I'm stopping the poetry there, you get the gist.
But she wants - needs, actually, though, because he doesn't think she just wants this. Ever since he's known her he's not been too bad at understanding her and right now she's practically comprised of neon fucking signs. She needs clarity. She's not just asking or demanding it. So he gives it to her, finally. There is a sound from the back of his throat, deep in his chest, that she's never heard and he hasn't heard in a long time - not really a growl but the sort of sound that comes directly before a hard-won response. If that makes literally any sense at all.
"Yes." He pulls her closer towards himself, down against him, even while he turns his face up towards her enough to be close enough to her face for the breath and warmth of their words to register on each others' cheeks. She has her hands in his hair, her fingers at his ports, and he has his breath on her skin, her weight against his hardness. "Yes, I want you." Maybe against the wall here in a minute, maybe just however you want him - he's got preferences but. Well.