Summary:Their works finished, Lucent and Varanim talk about jealousy.
XP:L1, V1
Tags:< Of The Water | Sol Invictus Logs | The Person You Were >
Lucent had finished his works for the moment. All around them under Zahara's blueprints and the works of Men and Faerie and Gods a new nation was rising. And the King of this nation looked for his girlfriend, or lover, or whatever they were at the moment, who was in there dealing with the necromantic fallout somewhere...
Varanim is in one of the new garden stretches, near the outer edge where watered flowers shade into natural desert plants, looking pensively out over the sweep of desert with only part of her attention in the land of the living.
Lucent "They are growing so fast." He singsongs, humming something from the First Age
Varanim "Growing? No, it shouldn't--oh, the plants." She blinks her eyes, vision coming back to this side of the Shroud, and looks around at him. "Try not to bring a Malfean wallowing through it right away, hmm?"
Lucent "No more Malfeans here. Not the Shadowed Unlife Equation, not Glimpse of the Night, not the Dragon of Bone and Salt, not even He Who Holds In Thrall..." He smiles at her, "This is a place of life. And cleansing."
Varanim "Yes, try not to go through your entire list of very special friends, it's hard on the landscape." She looks back steadily at his smile, a little frown creasing between her brows. "We need to talk."
Lucent "That... we do." He walks past her. "What was that, with The Doctor?"
Varanim rests her chin on folded hands, scowling at his back. "I thought that was Spring calling a meeting to talk Essence diseases. I don't remember having sex on the floor with any Abyssals, but from your reaction I'm starting to think my memory is spotty."
Lucent "You did not HAVE to." He clenches his fists. "Am I like that, to you?"
Varanim "No, back up. I didn't have to... to what? Make you jealous?"
Lucent "Have sex with an Abyssal on the floor in front of everyone, to make me react like that."
Varanim "Yes, I can see that." She narrows her eyes as she looks at him. "Is this a necromancy thing or a sex thing? I need to calibrate my incredulity, here."
Lucent "You hate this, right?" He sweeps around, and his hand goes to the pillars of the square being constructed around her great glass statue, to the pillars of the palace a few paces back from it from whence where they stood would be raised as its gardens. "The nobility, the opulence? Bear with me, it will be relevant."
Varanim "It's not my idiom," she agrees, folding her arms and leaning back.
Lucent "Your idiom is that of villages. Of the common man. Of 'rolling in the hay', as you so poetically call it whenever we get together. Even though there was never hay involved. Quite a few smeared pages of your books, though, sorry about that. I guess you could call it rolling in the paper." He continues, deliberately stalling
Varanim raises her eyebrows a bit and says, "They were mostly Zahara's books, but go on."
Lucent "So, let us imagine you walk into one of those villages you like so much. Like that." He points at the improvised quarters of so many tribes. "And you see a girl. She walks in with giddy smiles for a boy. Her eyes keep in him as they talk as if they knew each other, and when she walks out, she blows him a kiss. What does THAT say, in your idiom?"
Varanim "It says she'll be knocking on my door soon to ask how to tell if she's pregnant, and I'll give her a bundle of herbs that says the answer's no." Her eyes narrow further. "Or if I was looking at me rather than a random village girl, like in the conversation we're actually having, I'd say that my work makes me smile much more than people do, and I've never blown a sincere kiss in my life."
Lucent "SO." He puts two fingers on his forehead, "I have to have in mind that you act entirely different than all people in YOUR idiom, or MINE," He rips out images, sending her smiles, the kiss she has blown, everything else at her, "at all times? I am not Imrama, I am not Zahara. I cannot tell WHAT you are thinking. I can only tell you what to think."
Varanim looks down, her expression unreadable for a few seconds after the barrage of images, and then fixes him with her gaze again. "Lucent, I'll say this once: there's exactly one person in this conversation who regularly takes their clothes off in front of other people, and it isn't the one with the soulsteel arm."
Lucent "I never slept with Zahara. And the rest... we were over, then."
Varanim "My point, if you listen closely, is this: I don't care if you parade all your past conquests in front of me--in triplicate, no less--and I've mostly ignored your assumption that I was doing the same. Even if I were lavishing affection on every necrotic-flavored sweet young thing from here to Stygia--so what? You clearly think that's all right to do. So what is this really about?"
Lucent "I... was not. The Sisters are beautiful things. Friends. That is all, and I never meant for you to..." He hangs his head. "I had no idea that would make you jealous. It was all so... innocent!"
Varanim "I see. It's innocent for you, and dirty for me." Her voice is calm, flat.
Lucent "They are not EVIL. They are not our equals. They are no THREAT for you."
Varanim stands, moving closer and looking at him with narrowed eyes. "That's it, isn't it? You feel threatened."
Lucent "Have you ever given me a reason not to be? Look at Kai, she gave into their lures. Like Adiele did. All fall to the shadows, one after the other, and you are already so far..." He looks away, "I named you my queen. And it was not enough"
Varanim "Look at Lucent, he makes out with Abyssals so he can enlist them as generals in his army. Look at Lucent, he invites bits of a Malfean into his head. This isn't about me at all, is it? You're worried you can't save yourself."
Lucent turns his gaze to Varanim, staring at her with wide eyes. "... what?"
Varanim "Most of the time when I piss you off, I do it because that's the way I am. Sometimes," she taps him on the forehead, "I do it because I've seen in there, and I know there's a part of you that likes it when you hate me a little."
Varanim She moves her hand down to hold his chin, locking his eyes with hers. "I'd forgotten that when I was in there, I also saw you scared."
Lucent looks at her with wide eyes at first, his hands touching over hers' on his chin. "And you like it, too." He whispers, "The Malfean on my soul, the darkness around me. The shadow crescent is what got us together to begin with... to feel dirty. Nothing changes, does it?"
Varanim "Idiot," she says quietly, brushing his lips with her thumb. "It has nothing to do with any of that, for me."
Varanim "I did it then, and I do it now, because the world is brighter when you smile."
Lucent closes his eyes for a moment, all-too-human tears sliding off of them. He shakes, leaning foward and planting his lips on hers'. His arms go around her, shuddering, shaking. "... you are a really, really silly girl." He said with a sobbing, shaking voice. Nothing like the commanding tone that had brought countless people together for one ideal not long before, and yet the same.
Varanim kisses him back, then rests his head on her shoulder, stroking his hair and closing her eyes. "Just don't make me repeat myself in a few months," she says softly, her own voice shaking a bit. "That really pisses me off."
Lucent strokes her hair, tears dripping to his chin, wetting her hair as he nuzzles her. "Why do you always look away from it, then? Why do you always hate my light?"
Varanim Her shoulders shake in a brief, silent laugh. "You're hard to look at sometimes, it doesn't mean I hate you. It's... complicated."
Lucent "This is the only time I will get you to talk to me, right?" He laughs, something almost like a sob and then not, mirth and emotion mingling in such strange ways, "Might as well try to tell me now. Even if I am an idiot who could never see this..."
Varanim "Try again in six months, never know what you'll find," she says, smirk in her voice, then she pulls back and looks at him with his face framed in her hands. "We're different people, and sometimes when I look at you, it's very sharply clear to me how far away you are."
Lucent "I am different even from my very own self. But as different as I am..." There is a 'crack' from a shattering hearthstone, and suddenly Lucent is not there anymore. Varanim almost falls before she is held by Lucent... and then, another Lucent. "All of me will always keep you close. All of me."
Varanim "What the--! Oh. That's a... really cute trick, actually." She recovers herself with a slightly distracted smirk, reaching out to touch both faces lightly. "Are we okay? I mean..." she trails off with a sigh.
Lucent "Are we ever truly fine?" Azuriphel-Lucent asks, caressing her hair and leaning her against him.
Lucent "Does it ever matter?" Sangrael-Lucent asks with a smirk, planting a kiss on her lips.
Varanim "Okay, that's a really distracting way to deliver cheap philosophy," she says after the kiss, catching her breath. "We're, uh, done talking now, right?"
Lucent "Yes." Azuriphel-Lucent proclaims with a voice like the portals of Heaven.
Lucent "DO shut up." Sangrael-Lucent grins and pulls her into another kiss, leaving her mouth very, very busy indeed for next long while...