[P] i can't be alone with all that's on my mind

[Marisol]

i wish i could say everything i've done and still be loved.

There is so much to be done, and even more to worry about; it all lingers in the back of her mind like a bad dream, with the permanence and painfulness of a bone-deep bruise. Everywhere she looks, there is another criminal to be caught, another problem to be solved. Even here—in the dark, in the silence, away from the world—she finds it hard to turn her thoughts away from all the papers she’s left unsigned in her office in order to be standing here now.

But this… this is nice. With each second passing, a new knot unfurls from Marisol’s muscles, and with every breath she relaxes more, degree by degree. Tensions slowly leaks away. Eventually her weight is leaned comfortably against Theodosia’s, and she doesn’t protest or even flinch when a pale purple wing comes down to rest against her ribs. Instead she presses her nose to the soldier’s shoulder and breathes gently in. There is the smell she has come to recognize: dust and roses, leather and sweat. A home-smell.

Theodosia speaks, and Marisol listens.

It is a strange inversion of what she has come to expect of her life. At first it feels awkward, to stand in silence and bite back the urgent responses, to listen and pretend she isn’t shocked, or perturbed, or whatever that feeling is. She is so used to being the instigator, the actor, that to stand here and act as the audience feels so strange it’s nearly breath-stealing. I do not belong here, she thinks to herself, bitter. Talking about feelings. Dredging up the past.

But the minutes pass, and pass, and pass. And Marisol is not combusting. Every successful heartbeat feels like a miracle. She listens to her breath—a soft, animal-simple thing—and to the sound of Theodosia’s voice, rumbling like the threat of a storm, as it says things she has to think hard about to even begin to understand: 

He was a minor god of storms. Used it to convince him to try opium so he could take advantage. It was a wild and strange magic. He and I both very nearly died in the process.

He and I both very nearly died in the process. That part sticks. That part ricochets, loud as an echo, bouncing around inside her skull. For a brief moment it rings louder than a bell; for a brief moment she feels crippled by the sheer noise of it, high and thin and unending. 

And then it stops. 

Mari’s brows knit as she listens. Her ears are pricked forward, and she rolls her lip between her teeth as she listens, lost in thought. Of all the things Theodosia has said, the idea of her dying is the most unbelievable. How can someone like this—so strong and so stoic, so unrelated to death at all—die? How is a warrior expected to go out, besides kicking and screaming, having sprung from a head fully-formed? What kind of world would it be where she did not make it even to her first battlefield?

Finally she measures an inhale, an exhale. With sleepy gray eyes, the Commander watches as her breath stirs the whorls of fine, pale hair on Theodosia’s neck, and murmurs: “Well.” Then a short laugh. It makes a sound that is brittle in the cold, but not tense or afraid. “I wasn’t… expecting… that. But you understand it changes nothing.” Now her voice is tinged with genuine confusion; she glances up at the cadet with a look that speaks of incredulity, if not of Theodosia’s story then of the idea that it is supposed to be reflective of her. Mari knows as well as anyone how little those circumstances matter.

@Theodosia

"Speaking."

queen marisol

credits